Lettering designer Ray Cruz, creator of Bitstream’s VeraCruz, Fat Albert and Cruz Cantera, and many other typefaces, introduces Homeland BT, a finely drawn family of six weights, including two italics. This text and display typeface has a generous x-height and overall body width for great legibility at small text sizes. The exaggerated serifs impart a sense of stability and comfort, and give headlines a unique styling. Available in PostScript OpenType format, Homeland’s extended glyph set covers the Western and Central European, Baltic and Turkish languages.

The creation of designer Boris Mahovac, Tabita is a fun, freeform display typeface. The whimsical swirls and marks within the characters impart a childlike playfulness. There are many great glyphs in this typeface that lend themselves to expressive phrasing. The lowercase “q”, is especially animated! The extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Antagométrica BT is the creation of Argentine designer Maximiliano Giungi. A clean and slightly condensed sanserif, it is ideal for use in text settings, but its trendy design makes it distinctive enough for display work. The CFF OpenType glyph repertoire includes additional ligatures, full sets of superior and inferior figures as well as unlimited fractions. There are also tabular and proportional figure sets, and the extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Thomas Oldfield’s typeface, Reaper, is reminiscent of inscribed Greek letterforms but he claims that its origin is much simpler than that. “I recall”, Tom says, “that I just began the design by making the uppercase ‘I’ and continued using it to make up the other characters.” The cap only typeface has alternate cap forms in the lowercase positions, including a vastly scaled downed O and Q that make for some unusual text settings. Contrary to what the name might have you believe, there’s a lot of life in this quirky typeface.

Cataneo was designed at Bitstream by Richard Lipton and Jacqueline Sakwa and was initially released in 1993. Cataneo is an elegant chancery cursive typeface, inspired by the work of Bernardino Cataneo, a 16th-century Italian writing master. Cataneo offers as companions, typographer sets of swash characters and extensions to round out the family of three weights.

Drawn by Italian graphic designer Nicola Serradimigni, Drawboard is a fun, freeform display typeface. Serradimigni based each character on a rectangle and kept the use of curved shapes and diagonals to a minimum. Serradimigni had intended to use his sketches as a basis for a more precise outline, but we liked the spontaneity of the drawings so much that we encouraged him to keep that motif. The looseness of Drawboard is the result. The character set supports Central Europe, and includes some upper and lowercase alternates accessible via OpenType features.

A handsome, square sanserif, the ultra extended Cavalero is strictly a display design. The typeface was inspired by the Chevy Cavalier logotype.

Matt Desmond (MADType, Pufficlaude BT) would like you to meet Mesotone BT. This computer typeface design is monoweight and somewhat monowidth. The squarish unicase glyph forms feature eased corners and rounded terminal ends, which takes some of the edge off its techi look. Yet Mesotone still inspires one to explore the outer limits of the design universe. So, don’t tone it down; Mess with the fringes. Get Mesotone. Available in PostScript OpenType format, Mesotone’s extended glyph set covers the Western and Central European, Baltic and Turkish languages.

Intertype’s reaction to ATF’s Murray Hill.

An original Bitstream typeface prepared by Gerard Unger to provide a typeface of tapered stroke that will work well at lower resolutions.

Arrus was designed at Bitstream by Richard Lipton and first released in 1991. Arrus is based on Lipton’s own hand-lettered calligraphic alphabets that draw their influence from classic inscriptional forms. Arrus has small cap and extension typographer sets available as well.

PuffiClaude by Matt Desmond is a real piece of work. Great for funky display stuff, its got some jive junk hanging around every character. This OpenType font has many goodies including extra ligatures, superiors and inferiors, unlimited fractions, and a hip little smiley face. Hey, maybe it's a portrait of Claude! There are so many funky glyphs that it even supports Central European languages. Man, that's hip! Hook up.

Originally released in 1987, Charter incorporates three important features: compact set width to give economical copyfit; generous x-height to give readability at small point sizes; and sturdy open letterforms to give reliable reproduction at both typesetter and laser printer resolutions. The design brings a clarity and freshness to everyday documents, such as newsletters, textbooks, directories and technical manuals, where the reader’s concentration must not be interrupted by unfamiliar letterforms but where typographic dullness can itself impair comprehension. The Italic has cursive letterforms - so is instantly distinguishable, while being readable enough in its own right for continuous text. The Charter BT Pro Pack features 6 fonts: roman, italic, bold, bold italic, black, and black italic. The fonts include characters originally developed for expert sets, such as ligatures, ornaments, old style figures, small caps, and superiors. The Pro Pack fonts support Western, Central European, and Eastern European languages. OpenType fonts are a cross-platform font format. The same OpenType font can be installed on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Unix systems. Mac OS X and Windows 2000, XP, and Vista have built-in support for OpenType. OpenType fonts also work on Linux, Unix, and earlier versions of Windows, where they are recognized as TrueType fonts. OpenType includes many more features than the standard TrueType and PostScript formats, including the ability to install the same font on different platforms, crucial for document portability. OpenType fonts boost productivity because graphic designers and business professionals do not have to wrestle with many different fonts. With OpenType, customers have larger character sets to work with and fewer font files to deal with.

The beautiful calligraphic typeface Ambiance comes from master designer Rob Leuschke. The complete array of characters includes a swash alternate for each upper and lowercase letter. Called contextual alternates in OpenType, the swash characters are automatically substituted in the appropriate context when you select them.

Modakshar was inspired by traditional Indic handwriting scripts which ‘hang’ from a common upper horizontal bar. Adapting this motif to Latin letterforms was challenging. The typeface was first conceived in the 1970's as a design project in school. The current digital design was completed in 2002. Basic motif was inspired by traditional Indic script handwriting.

Masoud Nejabati has drawn upon his capable calligraphic skills to create this typeface. Persia represents his first latin-based design. This gentle and finely rendered script reveals Nejabati's extensive background in Islamic calligraphic art. The slight back slant further enhances the appearance of hand-scribed pen calligraphy.

Huxley Vertical meets Peignot in this stylized cap/lowercase hybrid design called Ambule. French designer Julien Janiszewski has created a clean, straightforward design that is strikingly effective in both text and display settings. Ambule Oblique and Ambule Outline complete the typeface family, extending its range of possible uses.

Based on Mr. Hubbard's own hand printing, Richfont Medium is an extremely casual design. Actually light in weight, it renders best at 14 point and above. Richfont Light and Bold are available from the designer.

The new Clarendon BT Pro typeface family features 450 glyphs in each font with expanded support for Central and Eastern European languages, and enhanced OpenType features including ligatures, diagonal fractions, superscript/subscripts and Case-Sensitive Forms. Clarendon BT is an updated revival of the square serif (also called Ionic or Egyptienne styles) with bracketed serifs, ball terminals and high xheights. These attributes give Clarendon BT a timeless appearance for a wide range of contemporary uses from websites, ads, publications and signage.

Melina Plain and Melina Fancy are characterized by graceful lines, strong contrast and nostalgic overtones. These typefaces are patterned after two members of a type family named Greco, released by Fundición Tipográfica Richard Gans of Madrid, Spain, in the 1920s. Melina Plain is a refined version of Greco Bold, and Melina Fancy is based on Greco Adornado, with the notable addition of a lowercase, which was not a part of the original design. Melina is based on two typefaces (ca. 1920) from the Fundición Tipográfica Richard Gans in Madrid, Spain. Nick Curtis first found Greco Adornado in a type specimen at the Library of Congress. It was a cap only design. He made a cut of the original (Melina Fancy) and created his own lowercase, and many other characters to support contemporary character sets. Later he came across Greco Bold, which had a lowercase, but he chose not to use it and instead, adapted his Melina Fancy to create Melina Plain.

Futuristic and spacey, Tannarin is a modular, cap-only typeface. Many letters are constructed of repeated components with the added twist of the round characters being shorter than the square characters.

The boss of extended typefaces, Brian Bonislawsky, has belted out this ultra wide design, EuroMachina, that looks like an odd meld of OCR-A, Microgramma and Bank Gothic. And if that wasn't enough, Brian then felt the need to distort it in various ways, creating Broken, Eroded and OverGreased. A little something for everyone.

Bitstream Cooper was designed at Bitstream in 1986 by means of adding light, medium, and bold styles, with the corresponding italics, to the existing black ones. Based on Cooper Black, 1919, by Oswald Bruce Cooper, which was firstly released as a hand composition font in 1922 by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler of Chicago and later spread by ATF. Cooper Black is an extra bold face based on Cooper Old Style. Bitstream Cooper is an old style face with rounded serifs and tilted back ovals. For use both in text (normal weights) and in advertising and display typography (heavy weights). Cyrillic version was developed for ParaType in 2000 by Manvel Shmavonyan and based on TM Oswald face of TypeMarket, 1996, by Victoria Grigorenko.

Ingram BT might be described as Deco, or Arts & Crafts, in style. Created by Alex Marshall, it is a very condensed design with high-waisted uppercase glyphs that feature dots rather than straight lines for the middle hairlines. There are two sets of alternate glyphs accessible via stylistic and contextual OpenType features. The contextual alternates offer the most interesting glyph substitutions. There are also oldstyle and tabular figures, superiors and inferiors, as well as unlimited fractions. Ingram is a very handsome, casual typeface, with a slightly rough finish. The compact lowercase remains very readable at text sizes and it is a pleasure to turn on the earth tone colors and typeset left and right justified paragraphs! The extended character set supports Baltic and Central European languages.

Ronna Penner's Sketchley is a 2001 winner of ATypI's bukva:raz! design competition, held recently in Moscow. Inspired by handwriting samples and unable to find a typeface to satisfy her needs, Ms. Penner decided to create her own. The result is this warm, casual script. The compliment of characters demanded the creation of two fonts. Sketchley is considered the base font and should be used for basic layouts. Sketchley Swash has numerous initial, medial and final swash characters that, when used thoughtfully with Sketchley, can recreate the look of hand drawn calligraphy.

Perhaps one of the more difficult typeface styles to space convincingly, Irakly, a serif-sans by Russian designer Oleg Karpinsky imparts an unfamiliar elegance. The odd mixture of superficial details such as the half serifs and the protruding horizontal strokes confuse your visual senses, yet the simple geometric roots of the letterforms are apparent and ultimately reassuring. Irakly Light and Bold make a great addition to any library. The OpenType versions have alternates that are more conservative in design and broaden the usefulness of the typefaces

Chianti was designed at Bitstream by senior designer Dennis Pasternak in 1991 and initially released in 1995. The intent behind the design was to provide a humanist sanserif of high readability at a wide range of sizes and weights. Humanist sanserifs (others that fall into this category are Linotype’s Frutiger and Optima, and Monotype’s Gill Sans) are an attempt to improve the readability of sanserifs by applying classical roman structure to the letterforms. To enhance its versatility, Mr. Pasternak designed a wide variety of alternate characters, rare ligatures, ornaments and swashes. Chianti is a friendly sanserif useful for a broad range of typographic needs.

The hand-hewn Islander looks like it could have been liberated from granite blocks.These demonstrative letter forms leave no doubt when it comes to conveying your message, yet they remain playful.

Introducing VeraCruz BT, a fanciful display typeface by Ray Cruz. A tasteful, flair serif design, VeraCruz BT is available as an OpenType font. By selecting the Contextual Alternates feature in OT savvy applications, many of the cap and lowercase characters will change automatically as you type to give the text an informal, animated look. There are also tabular and proportional figure sets, and the extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Ecliptica is an extended family of five very condensed typefaces in a single bold weight. The creation of Australian designer Robert Bell. Ecliptica has a Sans, a Semi-Serif, a Serif and a single Cursive that can be used with any of the other three styles. As an added bonus, Robert also designed a modern Blackletter companion. The Ecliptica family is an unusual layout of styles and all work equally well with one another. The OpenType versions of the Ecliptica fonts support an extended Latin character set that includes a full array of fractions as well as additional ligatures. The Sans and Cursive fonts contain some cap and lowercase alternates.

A meeting of Byzantine and Art Deco forms, Aphasia began as a series of handwritten captions to accompany drawings in the early 1990s. The drawings were abandoned to allow the lettering to become the real composition. Playfully set in blocks of verse with each line shaped through free-association, the only visual rule was that all the lines of capitals be of equal length. The challenge of the game required extensive abbreviations, ligatures, small caps, and superiors. With the advent of Letraset’s FontStudio program, the project moved into the typographic realm.

Eckhardt Freehand JNL is the fourth font based on the lettering of sign painters and show card writers. Jeff Levine has chosen to name this “mini series” of fonts in honor of his friend Albert Eckhardt, Jr., a talented sign man who ran Allied Signs [in Miami, Florida] from 1959 until his passing in 2005.

Humanist 521 is a Bitstream digitized version of Gill Sans typeface. The font was designed by Eric Gill and released by Monotype circa 1928-1930. Gill’s design is based on the typeface of Edward Johnston, the innovative British letterer and teacher, designed in 1916 for the signage of the London Underground. However, it has more classical proportions close to those of old style serifs, and thus is more suitable for text setting. With distinct roots in handwritten scripts, Gill’s typeface is classified as a humanist sans serif and is very legible and readable in text and display work. Having been released more than 80 years ago, it’s still very popular and in fact is an icon of British typographic style. The Cyrillic version of Ultra Bold weight was designed by Tagir Safaev in 1997. Six text styles and Extra Bold style in Cyrillic were designed later by Vladimir Yefimov and Isabella Chaeva. The Cyrillic version, in addition to the original Bitstream implementation of Humanist 521, has an alternative numeral 1 with the traditional shape and a set of old-style figures. Rereleased by ParaType in 2013.