Duddy is a “friendly” sans-serif typography designed by Eleonora Lana and the Letritas team. The shape of Duddy was created based on sketches that looked after carrying the concept of kindness as far as possible, keeping always in mind the readability and functionality of the font. In the stage of brainstorming, the team started listing things that were friendly to the touch or sight, such as a candy gum, or marshmallow, to become acquainted with the intended goal. Although slowly, as the letters were being created, the objects associated with the forms were not satisfactory, since when forming words a special personality of its own appeared. By reconceptualizing everything, the personality of the letter the team wanted to work with had to be redefined. Thus it went from "caramel" to "teddy bear", from "teddy bear" to "puppy" and from "puppy" to "dolphin". And Duddy is the perfect name for a dolphin. Duddy was a sound idea: friendly, intelligent, social. Once the concept was nailed, the design of graceful and “soft” shapes started. Almost chewable, almost huggable, as if composing words was a game. Duddy has a slanted version with "real italics". These italics are slightly more condensed than the regular version, in order to give it a different text texture. The typeface has 9 weights, ranging from “thin” to “heavy”, and two versions: "regular" and "italic". Its 18 files contain 729 characters with ligatures, alternates, small caps, oldstyle and tabular numbers, fractions, case sensitive, and unicase figures. It supports 219 Latin-based languages, spanning through 212 different countries. Duddy supports this languages: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Corsican Creek,Crimean Tatar (Latin),Croatian, Czech, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)Guadeloupean, Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian, Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotc?k (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, IgboI, locano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, M?ori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami), Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu, Zuni.

I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

Father's Day, or June 17 of this year, is in the middle of Argentinian winter. And like people do on wintery Sunday mornings, I was bundled up in bed with too many covers, pillows and comforters. Feeling good and not thinking about anything in particular, Father's Day was nowhere in the vicinity of my mind. My eleven year old son, Matías, came into the room with a handmade present for me. Up to this point, my Father's Day gift history was nothing unusual. Books, socks, hand-painted wooden spoons, the kind of thing any father would expect from his pre-teen son. So you can understand when I say I was bracing myself to fake excitement at my son's present. But this Father's Day was special. I didn't have to fake excitement. I was in fact excited beyond my own belief. Matí's handmade present was a complete alphabet drawn on an A4 paper. Grungy, childish, and sweeter than a ton of honey. He'd spent days making it, three-dimensioning the letters, wiggle-shadowing them. Incredible. A common annoyance for graphic designers is explaining to people, even those close to them, what they do for a living. You have to somehow make it understandable that you are a visual communicator, not an artist. Part of the problem is the fact that "graphic designer" and "visual communicator" are just not in the dictionary of standard professions out there. If you're a plumber, you can wrap all the duties of your job with 3.5 words: I'm a plumber. If you're a graphic designer, no wrapper, 3.5 or 300 words, will ever cover it. I've spent many hours throughout the years explaining to my own family and friends what I do for a living, but most of them still come back and ask what it is exactly that I do for dough. When you're a type designer, that problem magnifies itself considerably. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you start looking for the nearest exit, but none of the ones you can find is any good. All the one-line descriptions are vague, and every single one of them queues a long, one-sided conversation that usually ends with someone getting too drunk listening, or too tired of talking. Now imagine being a type designer, with a curious eleven year old son. The kid is curious as to why daddy keeps writing huge letters on the computer screen. Let's go play some ball, dad. As soon as I finish working, son. He looks over my shoulder and sees a big twirly H on the screen. To him it looks like a game, like I'm not working. And I have to explain it to him again. This Father's Day, my son gave me the one present that tells me he finally understands what I do for a living. Perhaps he is even comfortable with it, or curious enough about that he wants to try it out himself. Either way, it was the happiest Father's Day I've ever had, and I'm prouder of my son than of everything else I've done in my life. This is Matí's font. I hope you find it useful.

If you want to write something sincere and genuine but not too formal then this is the font for you. It is based on real handwriting, not some artificial calligraphy made to be either too haphazard or spiky or have loads of elegant flourishes but an ordinary person's writing, and designed to look as natural and as close to the original lettering as possible. Like any person's writing it is individual and distinctive, but so easy going on the eye those differences sit comfortably with you. It is friendly and open with easy to read glyphs both as lowercase and uppercase. The letters are relatively wide with clearly shaped distinct outlines. This font may be ideal for projects where you expect a wide readership with different reading abilities from young to old. When you are using this font a slightly bigger point size usually gives a better result so for a standard letter or similar you should size up to 15 points or more. Maree has been individually crafted to the smallest detail. To create a realistic handwriting font that looks relatively simple but works in a wide variety of languages requires a complexity and attention to detail most fonts will never require. This font in any ordinary business environment would never have been made, the effort required to make it too great, the length of time too long. There have been no shortcuts in this font, no automatic scanning or tracing, no automatic generation, no class kerning. Not only is each glyph individual but the width of letters, the height, the accents and the positions of the accents are all different. Even the line weight of the letters is designed to have natural variation but yet similar enough that the font appears as though it were written effortlessly in the same pen. And in order to keep the spacing consistent even though the letters have different widths, heights, lengths of descenders and so on, there are a vast number of kerning pairs, letter to letter, number to number, letter to number... All kerning has been individually assessed with an eye to proportionality taking in character shape, size and weight. For instance if you write a telephone number the numbers all sit close together but if you write a number before a letter such as in a UK post code or before a unit of measurement an extra little bit of space has been added which makes the number more distinct and therefore readable. That space is so natural to the eye that you don’t even know it is there. However even in the spacing allowance has been made for the fact it can’t be too perfect because when you write by hand the spacing is inconsistent. There have to be some letters which are too close or far apart otherwise the font would look artificial. For similar reasons if you are going to print out this font for a letter, etc, check the print version before you make any letter spacing changes because with the zoom functions in modern applications that uneven spacing and lettering can seem more pronounced than it actually is. When this font is printed out you will find it is surprisingly neat. This font is what it is, simple clear handwriting. You will not go wow. But if you want something unique and different and looks good on the page you won’t be disappointed. This font is not a work of art but it is a work of love. This font has a soul. How many fonts can you say that about?

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

This font is not just historic, but classy, timeless, and in its current form, a modern classic. The original Titling Caps and icons Jacque François Rosart painstakingly carved, now meticulously digitized to be a true, accurate, and complete representation of the original designs. You can get the fully matching family with "ALL", or choose the set that meets your immediate needs: Zodiac and Constellations - The Stars Have Aligned into a Great Font So what's your sign? Whatever it is, R&F has it, and in so many ways! Pictograph, symbol, constellation and picto-constellation are all included. Constellations are useable even in scientific and education settings: based on current star charts and matched to Bayer designations, these stars shine both in design and accuracy! Includes Rosart's original moon and sun faces. Faces for the planets to match those for the sun and moon. Rosart's symbols for the planets. Astrology symbols including, Rosart’s pictographs for the twelve signs. Constellations of the Zodiac from precise star charts. Precise small star shapes, so you can design other constellations. Pinwheel, saltires, asterisks, solid stars, and even the Christmas star. Dave Lawrence, "Each symbol was carefully designed to match the main font." Alchemy Symbols - Turns A Design into Gold From labeling your cupboard of magical ingredients to getting one step closer to the golden goose, these rare alchemical symbols are a treasure trove of possibilities. Including: classic symbols for elements combinations medicinals chemistry mathematical symbols Includes music symbols for titling, as well as Verse and Response symbols. Seasons - Symbols to Keep Things Organized Throughout the Year Classic weather stylings, including old fashioned lightning and an eclipsing moon with the four-o'clock shadow. Map Markers Religious Symbols Phases of the moon. Pointing symbols: fingers, arrows, triangles, with circles Matching Italics CAL's Dimension Slant™ Instead of sloping all the pictures and drawings to an even slant, a multidimensional approach was used. And each symbol was evaluated and crafted individually. Pro World1 Font The pro world font contains all of these: Latin Standard set Rosart's original backwards X alternate. Alternate U shape. In the italic: swash variants for the J, Q, and Y. Proportional Lining (default), proportional old style, small caps figures. CAL Dimension Slant, for dynamic italics Includes Rosart's original moon and sun faces, along with additional faces for each planet. Rosart’s symbols for the planets and pictographs for the twelve signs of the zodiac. Constellations of the Zodiac along with small star shapes. Large stars, pinwheel, saltires, asterisks Symbols for chemistry Medicine Music symbols Mathematical symbols Pointing symbols like the finger, acorn, arrow and triangle. Geometrical shapes. Plus these more: Latin Pro character set for central European languages and Turkish. Rare kerns for Polish, Czech, Slovakian and others. Ligatures needed for some central European orthographies. Lowered German Umlauts for better line spacing. Cyrillic uppercase and small caps for eastern Europe, southern Europe, and Russia, with kerning. Rosart’s original Greek uppercase and small caps, but also tonos for monotonic Greek. Vietnamese, which has been kerned. Pinyin, including a special form of the Ü so that titles can be set closer. Numbers: A set of stacking (nut) fractions, along with very elegant automatic fractions A large set of currency symbols in lining, old style, small caps, denominator and numerator sizes. Our first Retail Pricing Feature: (ss03 + ss04) Just turn on the feature and type $1.99 and Rosart will do the rest. Ampersand alternates. Numerator sized musical sharp and flat symbols. Dave Lawrence, “From the moment I saw these letters I knew I had to make this typeface. What I didn’t know was that I would end up drawing most of Rosart’s special symbols... But it was too hard to resist."

The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

TA Bankslab graphic presentation at Behance The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

Arsenica is a serif typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro for Zetafonts, and developed by a design team including Mario De Libero, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. The design of Arsenica takes its inspiration from Italian poster design at the beginning of the century, a time where typography, lettering and illustration where closely interwoven. Dawning nationalist movements, rather than using the modernist language, pushed on traditional Old Style letterforms often imbued with Art Nouveau and Deco sensibility. Artists like Giorgio Muggiani not only illustrated posters for Cinzano, Pirelli and Rinascente, but also provided logo design for newspapers, like "Il Popolo d'Italia". Starting from this mix of eclectic influences, Canovaro first developed the Arsenica Antiqua family, designed as display typeface that keeps the original Old Style low-contrast, wide proportions and quirky stylistic inventions. These where then distilled in a high contrast, Arsenica Display family, expanding the weight range to include both poster, ultra-bold weights and lighter weights that give the design a distinct calligraphic flavour. Bringing the letterforms into contemporary taste meant also developing alternate letterforms that were included in the Arsenica Alternate family, that drops the art nouveau details in favour of a more controlled modern serif aesthetic. Finally, Arsenica Text was developed by expanding the design space in the optical size axis, creating a low contrast, strongly readable old style typeface family, with a reduced weight set, oriented for long body copy typesetting. The final result is a superfamily of 41 weights, covering the design space with an expanded charset of over 900 glyphs, with full coverage of over 200 languages using latin and Cyrillic alphabets. All the weights of Arsenica come with a full set of open type features allowing to explore its vintage-inspired visual inventions thanks to stylistic sets, discretionary ligatures, contextual alternates and positional numbers. Two variable typefaces are included in the full family, allowing you to explore the design space and precisely control not only the weight but also the optical size design variations. • Suggested uses: perfect for elegant modern branding and logo design, fascinating editorial design, expressive packaging and countless other projects. • 43 styles: 7 weights + 7 italics, 4 different styles + 2 variable fonts. • 942 glyphs in each weight. • Useful OpenType features: Access All Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Case-Sensitive Forms, Glyph Composition / Decomposition, Discretionary Ligatures, Kerning, Lining Figures, Localized Forms, Mark Positioning, Mark to Mark Positioning, Oldstyle Figures, Ordinals, Stylistic Alternates, Stylistic Set 1, Stylistic Set 2, Stylistic Set 3, Stylistic Set 4, Stylistic Set 5, Stylistic Set 6, Stylistic Set 7, Stylistic Set 8, Stylistic Set 9, Slashed Zero. • 216 languages supported (extended Latin and Cyrillic alphabets): English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Javanese (Latin), Turkish, Italian, Polish, Afaan Oromo, Azeri, Tagalog, Sundanese (Latin), Filipino, Moldovan, Romanian, Indonesian, Dutch, Cebuano, Igbo, Malay, Uzbek (Latin), Kurdish (Latin), Swahili, Hungarian, Czech, Haitian Creole, Hiligaynon, Afrikaans, Somali, Zulu, Serbian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Shona, Quechua, Albanian, Catalan, Chichewa, Ilocano, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Neapolitan, Xhosa, Tshiluba, Slovak, Danish, Gikuyu, Finnish, Norwegian, Sicilian, Sotho (Southern), Kirundi, Tswana, Sotho (Northern), Belarusian (Latin), Turkmen (Latin), Bemba, Lombard, Lithuanian, Tsonga, Wolof, Jamaican, Dholuo, Galician, Ganda, Low Saxon, Waray-Waray, Makhuwa, Bikol, Kapampangan (Latin), Aymara, Zarma, Ndebele, Slovenian, Tumbuka, Venetian, Genoese, Piedmontese, Swazi, Zazaki, Latvian, Nahuatl, Silesian, Bashkir (Latin), Sardinian, Estonian, Afar, Cape Verdean Creole, Maasai, Occitan, Tetum, Oshiwambo, Basque, Welsh, Chavacano, Dawan, Montenegrin, Walloon, Asturian, Kaqchikel, Ossetian (Latin), Zapotec, Frisian, Guadeloupean Creole, Q’eqchi’, Karakalpak (Latin), Crimean Tatar (Latin), Sango, Luxembourgish, Samoan, Maltese, Tzotzil, Fijian, Friulian, Icelandic, Sranan, Wayuu, Papiamento, Aromanian, Corsican, Breton, Amis, Gagauz (Latin), Māori, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Alsatian, Atayal, Kiribati, Seychellois Creole, Võro, Tahitian, Scottish Gaelic, Chamorro, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Kashubian, Faroese, Rarotongan, Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Karelian (Latin), Romansh, Chickasaw, Arvanitic (Latin), Nagamese Creole, Saramaccan, Ladin, Palauan, Sami (Northern Sami), Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Drehu, Wallisian, Aragonese, Mirandese, Tuvaluan, Xavante, Zuni, Montagnais, Hawaiian, Marquesan, Niuean, Yapese, Vepsian, Bislama, Hopi, Megleno-Romanian, Creek, Aranese, Rotokas, Tokelauan, Mohawk, Onĕipŏt, Warlpiri, Cimbrian, Sami (Lule Sami), Jèrriais, Arrernte, Murrinh-Patha, Kala Lagaw Ya, Cofán, Gwich’in, Seri, Sami (Southern Sami), Istro-Romanian, Wik-Mungkan, Anuta, Cornish, Sami (Inari Sami), Yindjibarndi, Noongar, Hotcąk (Latin), Meriam Mir, Manx, Shawnee, Gooniyandi, Ido, Wiradjuri, Hän, Ngiyambaa, Delaware, Potawatomi, Abenaki, Esperanto, Folkspraak, Interglossa, Interlingua, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Lojban, Novial, Occidental, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Slovio (Latin), Volapük.

❧ Useful links: Luther’s Manuscripts at the UNESCO Memory of the World at Google Arts and Culture Martin Luther font on Kickstarter (with Film about the creation) Each letter of the Martin Luther font is strictly based on original samples found in Martin Luther’s 500 year old handwritten manuscripts. Letters that occur more often for example vowels have two or more different versions stored in the font. (➶ Figure 4) These alternative forms are exchanged automatically by the font as you type, and create a vivid look that comes close to actual handwriting. The font avoids that two identical letters are placed next to each other like, for example the two “o” in the word “look”. ➸ What Historic Sources is the Font based on? Two historic documents were used to base the font on. The notes Luther took before giving his speech in Worms in 1521 and a 6 page letter he wrote immediately after to Emperor Charles V., summarising his speech (➶ Figure 2). Both documents have been added to the UNESCO “Memory of the World” and can be seen at the Google Arts and Culture website. ➸ The Creation of a Handwriting Font The creation of a handwriting font is very different from the creation of a regular font. Harald Geisler has specialised in recreating handwriting in preceding projects with Albert Einstein’s, Sigmund Freud’s and his own handwriting. His experience working with Archives and Museums has gone into this project. First Geisler analyses the movement in the writing to understand how each letter is drawn. This involves partially learning how to write like a person. In this process not the outlines of the sample are reproduced but the original movement path of the handwriting (➶ Figure 3). In a second step width and contrast is added to reproduce Martin Luther’s characteristic impetus and the writing tools used at the time. (Link: Youtube Playlist showcasing the creation of individual letters) How about signs that can’t be found in archives? Some Glyphs can not be found in 500 year old manuscripts, for example the @-sign. Towards the end of the creation one collects a profund amount of details about how a writer moves on paper and addresses certain tasks moving the pen. Keeping this knowledge in mind an improvisation can be based on similar letter forms. For example the @ sign is based on of the movement of a lowercase a and parenthesis. ➸ Features of the Martin Luther font ❶ Extensive Documentation of the creation of the font, including high quality reproduction of the used manuscripts. ❷ Additional texts from Historian Dr. Henning Jürgens and Palaeographer (and Luther handwriting expert) Prof. Ulrich Bubenheimer ❸ Alternating Letters - in handwriting every word looks a bit different. To avoid that two identical letterforms are placed next to each other (for example in the word look) the font actively changes between different versions of letters as you type. ❹ Ligatures - characteristic writing forms when two letters are combined (for example “ct”) (➶ Figure 5) ❺ Terminal Letterforms - renders a special letterform when letter is at the end of a word. (➶ Figure 8) ❻ ‘’’Initial and Medial Letterforms''' - some letterforms are different when placed in the beginning or middle of a word, for example the lowercase s. ❼ Luther Rose - is a seal Luther used to authorise his correspondence. Today it is a widely recognized symbol for Luther. When you enter the numbers of Luthers year of birth and death 14831546 using the Martin Luther PRO font, it will render a stylised version of the Luther Rose. (➶ Figure 7) ❽ Historic letter-forms - letter-forms that are specific to medieval writing around 1500. For example the long-s or h with a loop at the bottom. (➶ Figure 6) ⚑ Multi language support - see the technical information tab for a full list of supported languages. (➶ Figure 11) ➸ The different Styles explained ❋ Martin Luther PRO - this includes all features listed above and is geared towards writing texts that are more readable today. It features alternating letters to create a natural handwriting look as well as two stylistic sets accessible through the OpenType menu. Historic forms are available through the glyph picker. ❋ Martin Luther Historic - this font creates a historically correct reproduction (i.e. with long-s) of Luther’s medieval latin handwriting. It features alternating letters to create a natural handwriting look as well as two stylistic sets accessible through the OpenType menu. ❋ Martin Luther Expert-1 - Dedicated access to the first set of letters only. ❋ Martin Luther Expert-2 - Dedicated access to the second set of letters only. ❈❈❈ Family Pack - recieve all fonts at a discounted price. ❈❈❈ ➸ Kickstarter The creation and development of the Martin Luther font was financed by 500 supporters on ➸Kickstarter.

Fioritura is a floral display typeface inspired by Sandro Botticelli's "Primavera" ("Spring") and Guiseppe Arcimboldo's "The Four Seasons" paintings. Fioritura means flowering in Italian, and the character composition consists of stems, leaves, flowers, and flying pollen. Scripts: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic. Language count: 480+. Glyph count: 1103. Kerning: 936 class pairs. Hinting: Not applied. Contextual Alternates: AA BB CC DD EE FF GG LL MM NN OO PP RR SS TT ZZ aa bb cc dd ee ff gg ll mm nn oo pp rr ss tt zz. To keep the writing natural, every second of two frequently repeated letters is automatically replaced by its alternative version. Turned on by default. Contextual Alternates: ΆΈΉΊΌΎΏ. Greek uppercase accented characters lose their tonos accent and retain only dieresis in All Caps mode. Turned on by default. If you need tonos accents in All Caps then turn off Contextual Alternates (calt) feature. Stylistic Alternates: ABCDEFGLMNOPRSTZ abcdefglmnoprstz. Supported languages: Abenaki, Abron, Acheron, Achinese, Achuar-Shiwiar, Adamawa Fulfulde, Adangme, Afar, Afrikaans (Latin), Aghem, Aguaruna, Aja, Akan, Albanian, Alsatian, Amahuaca, Amarakaeri, Amis, Andaandi (Dongolawi), Anuta, Ao Naga, Apinayé, Arabela, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asháninka, Asturian, Asu, Atayal, Awa-Cuaiquer, Awetí, Aymara, Azerbaijani (Latin, Cyrillic), Baatonum, Bafia, Bagirmi Fulfulde, Balinese, Balkan Romani, Bambara (Latin), Baoulé, Bari, Basaa, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Batak (Latin), Belarusian (Latin, Cyrillic), Bemba, Bena, Biali, Bikol, Bini, Bislama, Boko, Bora, Borgu Fulfulde, Bouna Kulango, Bosnian, Breton, Buginese (Latin), Bulgarian, Buryat, Bushi, Candoshi-Shapra, Cape Verdean Creole, Caquinte, Caribbean Hindustani, Cashibo-Cacataibo, Cashinahua, Catalan, Cebuano, Chachi, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chayahuita, Chechen, Chewa (Latin), Chickasaw, Chiga, Chiltepec Chinantec, Chokwe, Chuukese, Cimbrian, Cofán, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Creek (Muscogee), Croatian, Czech, Dagaare, Dagbani, Danish, Dawan, Dehu, Delaware, Dendi, Dholuo, Dimli, Dinka, Ditammari, Drehu, Duala, Dutch, Dungan, Dyula, Embu, English, Erzya, Ese Ejja, Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Ewondo, Falam Chin, Fanti, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, Fon, French, Friulian, Frisian, Fula, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ga’anda, Garifuna, Gen, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gilbertese, Gonja, Gooniyandi, Greek, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Guarani, Gusii (Latin), Gwich’in, Haitian, Hakha Chin (Latin), Hän, Hani, Hausa (Latin), Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Huastec, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo (Latin), Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Ixcatlán Mazatec, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Jola, Kabuverdianu, Kabiyè, Kabuverdianu, Kabyle (Latin), Kaingang, Kako, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kalmyk (Cyrillic), Kamba, Kanuri, Kaonde, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karachay (Cyrillic), Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh, Kekchí, Kenzi, Khalkha (Cyrillic), Khasi, Khoekhoe, K’iche’, Kikuyu, Kimbundu, Kinyarwanda (Ruanda), Kiribati, Kirmanjki, Kirundi (Rundi), Kissi, Kituba, Klingon, Kölsch, Kongo, Konzo, Koyra Chiini, Koyraboro Senni, Kpelle, Krio, Kuanyama, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kven Finnish, Kwasio, Kyrgyz (Cyrillic), Ladin, Ladino, Lakota, Lamnso’, Langi, Latgalian, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Ligurian, Limba, Lingala, Lithuanian, Lobi, Lojban, Lombard, Low German, Lozi, Luba-Katanga, Luba-Lulua, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Maasai, Maasina Fulfulde, Macedonian, Machame, Madurese (Latin), Makhuwa, Makonde, Makwe, Malagasy (Latin), Malaysian Malay (Latin), Maltese, Mam, Maninkakan, Manx, Maore Comorian, Māori, Mapudungun, Marquesan, Marshallese, Masai, Matsés, Mauritian Creole, Mbelime, Megleno-Romanian, Mende, Meriam Mir, Meru, Meta’ (Latin), Metlatónoc Mixtec, Mezquital Otomi, Mi’kmaq, Minangkabau, Mirandese, Mískito, Miyobe, Mizo, Mohawk, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian (Cyrillic), Montagnais, Montenegrin (Latin, Cyrillic), Mossi, Mundang, Munsee, Murrinh-Patha, Murui Huitoto, Mwani, Naga Pidgin, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Nama, Nateni, Navajo, Ndebele, Ndonga, Neapolitan, Ngazidja Comorian, Ngiemboon, Ngiyambaa, Ngomba, Nigerian Fulfulde, Niuean, Nobiin, Nomatsiguenga, Noongar, Norwegian (Bokmål, Nynorsk), Novial, Nuer, Nyamwezi, Nyanja, Nyankole, Nyemba, Nzima, Occidental (Interlingue), Occitan, Ojitlán Chinantec, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Onĕipŏt, Oromo, Oroqen, Oshiwambo (Ovambo), Ossetian (Latin, Cyrillic), Otuho, Páez, Palauan, Paluan, Pampanga, Papantla Totonac, Papiamentu, Pedi, Picard, Pichis Ashéninka, Piedmontese, Pijin, Pintupi-Luritja, Pipil, Pohnpeian, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Prussian, Pulaar, Pular, Purepecha, Qiandong Miao, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romani, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rotokas, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Sakha, Samburu, Sami (Inari, Lule, Northern, Southern, Pite, Skolt, Ume), Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Secoya, Sena, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Sharanahua, Shawnee, Shilluk, Shipibo-Conibo, Shona, Shuar, Sicilian, Silesian, Siona, Slovak, Slovene (Slovenian), Slovio (Latin), Soga, Somali, Soninke, Sorbian (Lower, Upper), Sotho (Nothern, Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sukuma, Sundanese (Latin), Susu, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tachelhit (Latin), Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tajik (Cyrillic), Talysh, Tasawaq, Tatar (Cyrillic, Latin), Tedim Chin, Teso, Tetum, Ticuna, Timne, Tiv, Toba, Tojolabal, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tonga, Tongan, Tosk, Totontepec Mixe, Tsafiki, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin, Cyrillic), Tuvaluan, Tuvan, Twi, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Uab Meto, Ukrainian, Ulithian, Umbundu, Urarina, Uyghur (Cyrillic), Uzbek (Latin, Cyrillic), Vai, Venda, Venetian, Veps, Vietnamese, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Waama, Waci Gbe, Wallisian, Walloon, Walser, Wangaaybuwan-Ngiyambaa, Waorani, Waray, Warlpiri, Wasa, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof (Latin), Xavante, Xhosa, Xwela Gbe, Yagua, Yanesha’, Yangben, Yanomamö, Yao, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Yoruba (Latin), Yucateco, Záparo, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni. The promo images used photos of Cottonbro, Maria Lindsey from Pexels, and Andreea Popa, Wyron A from Unsplash.

Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

Roller Poster is named after Alfred Roller. In 1902, Roller created a poster to advertise the 16th exhibit of Austrian Artists and Sculptures Association, representing the Vienna Secession movement. The exhibit was to take place in Vienna during January & February 1903. The location is not mentioned because everyone in Vienna knew it would be held at the exhibit hall in the Secession Building at Friedrichstraþe 12, a few blocks south of the Opernring, near the Naschmarkt. Designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich in 1897, the buiilding has been restored and stands today as one finest of the many fine examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Vienna (see vienna_secession_bldg.jpg). Because of its dome, it is called “the golden cabbage.” The poster itself is unique. The word “secession” is in one type style and takes up two-thirds of the elongated poster. At the bottom of the poster are the details in a different lettering style. It is this second style at the bottom that is the basis for the font Roller Poster. In keeping with our regular naming conventions, we were going to call it Roller Gezeichnete (hand-drawn), but the wonderful play on both words and the shape of the three S’s in secession was too compelling. In November 1965 there was an exhibit of Jugendstil and Expressionist art at the University of California. Alfred Roller’s Secession Poster was part of that exhibit. Wes Wilson was designing promotional material at Contact Printing in San Francisco. Among their clients was a rock promoter named Bill Graham, staging dance-concerts at Fillmore Auditorium. Wilson saw the catalog from the UC exhibit and Roller’s lettering. Wilson adapted Roller’s letter forms to his own fluid style. The result was the poster for the August 12-13, 1966 Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead concert at Fillmore put on by Graham (BG23-1). Wilson continued to use Roller’s letter forms on most of the posters he did for Graham through May 1967, when he stopped working for Graham. The posters were extremely successful and the lettering style along with Roller’s letter forms were picked up by other artists, including Bonnie MacLean, Clifford Charles Seeley, James Gardner, and others. The Secession poster and the Fillmore posters have inspired a number of fonts in addition to ours. Among them are JONAH BLACK (& WHITE) by Rececca Alaccari, LOVE SOLID by Leslie Carbarga and MOJO by Jim Parkinson. Each is different and yet each clearly shows its bloodlines. Our font differs in two ways: 1) the general differences in the interpretation of the letter forms and 2) the modification of the basic letter form to incorporate the diacriticals within the implied frame of the letter, after the manner of the original design by Roller. We borrowed Carbarga’s solution to the slashed O and used it, in a modified form, for other characters as well to accomplish the same purpose. We recommend that you buy ours and at least one of the other three. According to Alaccari, a version called URBAN was released by Franklin Lettering in the 70’s (and is shown on page 51 of The Solotype Catalog). For comparison of our font to original design, see image files roller_poster_2s.jpg of original poster and roller_poster_2sx.jpg showing reconstruction using our font for the lower portion (recontructed area indicated by blue bar). Please note the consistency of character width. In the lower case, 23 of the basic 26 letters are 1/2 EM Square wide. The ‘i’ is an eighth narrower, while the ‘m’& ‘w’ are one quarter wider. All the Upper Case letters are 1/8 EM wider than the lower case. This is to make it easier to fill a geometrical shape like a rectangle, allowing you to capture a little of the flavor of Wes Wilson’s Fillmore West poster using only a word processor. We have also included a number of shapes for use as spacers and endcaps. If you have a drawing program that allows you to edit an ‘envelope’ around the letters to distort their shape, you can really get creative. I used Corel Draw for the gallary images, but there are other programs that can accomplish the same thing. The image file “roller_poster_keys.jpg” shows the complete character set with the keystrokes required for each character (see “HiH_Font_readme.txt” for instruction on inserting the non-keyboard characters). The file “roller_poster_widths.jpg” shows the exact width of each character in EM units (based on 1000 units per EM square). You will notice that the font is set wide for readability. However, most programs will allow you to tighten up on the character spacing after the manner of Roller & Wilson. In MS Word, for example, go to the FORMAT menu > FONT > CHARACTER SPACING. Go to the second Drop-Down Menu, labeled ‘Spacing’ and select "condensed' and then set the amount that you want to condense ‘by’ (key on the little arrows); two points (2.0) is a godd place to start. Let your motto be EXPLORE & EXPERIMENT. Art Nouveau has always been one of my favorite movements in art -- I grew up in a home with a couple of Mucha prints hanging on the living room wall. Perhaps because of that and because I lived through the sixties, I have enjoyed researching and designing this font more than any other I have worked on. Let’s face it (pardon the pun), Roller Poster is a FUN font. You owe it to yourself to have fun using it.

TT Ricordi useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options The TT Ricordi font family is a collection of three display heading serifs designed to significantly diversify the traditional font palette. Each font from the TT Ricordi family was drawn by a separate designer and has its own story. With that, all three fonts are close in thickness and similar in their character compositions and are featured in the uppercase set and the small capitals set, which replaces lowercase characters. The fonts have the broad support of Latin languages and support basic Cyrillic. The project originates from the pre-coronavirus tourist trips to Italy, during which our art director Yulia Gonina has accumulated many photographs of historical inscriptions and tablets. Many of these inscriptions had interesting character or unusual character shapes. We wanted to work with them, to try to reinterpret them, and, if possible, make them ultramodern and accessible to the modern font user. The fonts from the TT Ricordi typeface turned out to be quite display and contemporary, but at the same time, they retained subtle references to historic inscriptions. The fonts fit perfectly both on the covers of book classics and in glossy magazine layouts. They can also be used in posters and packaging, or as the main expressive element of company branding. In addition, all three serifs from the TT Ricordi font family go well with functional sans-serifs such as TT Norms Pro or TT Commons. TT Ricordi Nobili is a display serif with a rich Roman ancestry and contemporary world views. It stands out from the crowd with its subtlety and elegance. The font was drawn by Anna Tikhonova and was inspired by an inscription carved into the stone floor of a cathedral in Florence. Because people walked over the inscription, some of the letters got thinner and worn out over time. It is this feeling of disappearing or flickering elements that we wanted to capture and implement in the project. The TT Ricordi Nobili has high contrast, even though the font itself is quite thin. The serifs in the font are not massive at all, but at the same time, they are display serifs. There is a certain tension in TT Ricordi Nobili, and the viewer perceives this tension. We can say that behind the external classic facade lies a rather modern plot. The font has a large set of discrete ligatures which allow to create interesting combinations and expand the capabilities of the font. There are 709 glyphs in the TT Ricordi Nobili font, and a whole set of useful features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, pnum, case, dlig, ss01, ss02, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, calt. TT Ricordi Todi is a wide serif with a classic base and a contemporary nature. The font turned out to be refined yet sharp, and in places even pushy and aggressive. The font was drawn by Yulia Gonina, and the project was based on plaques with engraved street names from the small Italian town of Todi. The main challenge was to decipher the characteristic features of the signs and emphasize them in a modern way. In addition, it was necessary to draw a Cyrillic alphabet that would not be inferior to the Latin alphabet in its expressiveness. The TT Ricordi Todi has fairly wide character proportions, and there is practically no contrast in them. The main feature of the font is the combination of smooth round shapes with deliberately squared shapes. In addition, the font is characterized by crisp and sharp character details, exaggerated ascenders and descenders, and muted contrast. Among the interesting font peculiarities, you can choose between the characteristic long descenders and ascenders and their more tempered versions, you can find a stylistic set with triangular dots, alternative versions of the EF characters and two letter ? shapes, round and squared. There are 876 glyphs in the TT Ricordi Todi font, and a whole set of useful features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, pnum, case, dlig, salt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, calt. TT Ricordi Fulmini is a fashionable contemporary serif firmly holding on to its historic roots. The font turned out to be like a thistle flower: bright and catchy, but still subtle and delicate. TT Ricordi Fulmini was drawn by Marina Khodak, and the initial inspiration for the project was the inscription on the altar from the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia. As the font was pulled into “contemporaneity”, it was completely transformed and revealed its new side. The main catchy detail in the TT Ricordi Fulmini is the aggressive and rather sharp diagonal serifs. In addition, in the process of working on the font, several graphic solutions emerged, for example, the mono-serifs and the very calligraphic connections of diagonal strokes with their historic spirit. We wanted to keep them, and thus 4 thematic stylistic sets appeared in the font, thanks to which we can greatly change the perception of TT Ricordi Fulmini. In addition, the font has a set of interesting discrete ligatures. There are 793 glyphs in the TT Ricordi Fulmini font, and a whole set of useful features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, pnum, case, dlig, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, calt. TT Ricordi supports more than 180+ languages, such as: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian+, Aleut (lat), Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian+, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani +, Banjar, Basque +, Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama+, Boholano+, Chamorro+, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian+, Cornish, Corsican +, Cree, Croatian, Czech+, Danish, Dutch+, Embu, English+, Esperanto, Estonian+, Faroese+, Fijian, Filipino+, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian+, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician+, Ganda, German+, Gusii, Haitianm, Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian+, Icelandic+, Ilocano, Indonesian+, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian+, Javanese, Jola-Fonyi, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh (lat), Khasi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Leonese, Lithuanian, Livvi-Karelian, Luba-Kasai, Ludic, Luganda+, Luo, Luxembourgish+, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay+, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau+, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish+, Portuguese+, Quechua+, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian +, Romansh+, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Sasak, Scots, Sena, Serbian (lat)+, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Silesian, Slovak+, Slovenian+, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho+, Spanish+, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish+, Swiss German +, Tagalog+, Tahitian, Taita, Talysh (lat), Tatar+, Teso, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan+, Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Tsonga, Tswana +, Turkish+, Turkmen (lat), Uyghur, Valencian+, Vastese, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Welsh+, Wolof, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu+, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (cyr), Erzya, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Macedonian+, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Nogai, Russian+, Rusyn, Serbian (cyr)+, Ukrainian.

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.