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.

Humanist 531 is the Bitstream version of Syntax (Stempel, 1968) by Hans Eduard Meier. A humanist sans serif typeface with an optically even thickness of the line which interprets a humanist old style type of the Renaissance. Its vertical strokes are inclined to the right by one degree. Serves well in text and display typography. Cyrillic version was developed at ParaType in 1999 by Isay Slutsker and Manvel Shmavonyan and was awarded Diplomae at Kirillitsa'99 and "bukva:raz!" type design contests.

Humanex is the first text typeface of Sébastien Truchet. He created it during the year of postgraduation ‘Systèmes graphiques, typographique & language' in Amiens. The beginning stages of the font development involved calligraphic research based on humanistic ductus. Sébastien’s goal was to introduce modules in a lineal structure. Downstrokes and upstrokes are homogeneous. Links between stem and curve are straight. It gives solidity and thickness to the typographical composition. The first version was a Semi Bold version and its italic. This typeface gave a blackest text. You can see the first display typeface, Humanex Ultralight. Sébastien kept the Semibold structure in order to make a thin typeface. Its goal is to give support to the Semibold version. It is a good typeface in big sizes. In order to add a better legibility, Sébastien built a Book version to have a brightest grey of text. The reading is more comfortable.

"Humanista" is the name of a multilingual chancery script font by Bertram Kaiser. The idea in this long-term project was to blend the boundaries between analogue calligraphic handwriting and designing a font digitally, while using all technical possibilities of modern type design. All glyphs were originally written with a broadnib and then carefully vectorized, creating a human charme inside the font. In this design you will find influences from great calligraphy masters like Hermann Zapf or Werner Schneider. The pro version comes along with a big variety of alternate glyphs, initial and terminal forms, swash capitals and ligatures, which gives you the possibility of designing individual text layouts. Inside the font you will also find a set of italic roman capitals plus fitting numerals and interpunction, which can be treated like a font itself. You can activate them through the Open-Type menue (stylistic-set 4) or set manually via the glyphs window (ADOBE applications). When using the feature "swashletters" make sure to also activate the feature "contextual alternates" to get an appealing textdesign with alternating swashletters. This font can be used for display sizes as well as for smaller textsizes like on Invitationcards or in magazines.

Bitstream's version of Adsans originally released by Linotype & Machinery.

I decided to draw the Regular style of Trivia Humanist not too light and the Bold not too dark. Delicate anatomy and moderate contrasts of serifed humanist typefaces aren’t usually born by interpolating between extremes, but rather by meticulous care for each individual letter. A delicious blend of a trace of punchcutter’s tool and calligrapher’s hand with as few historical reminiscences as possible. It stays away from any strong aesthetic colorations as well, which is a common feature of the Trivia family system. I wanted a clear and majestic typeface for book jackets, LP cover designs, posters, exhibition catalogues and shorter texts. But at the end it turned out excellent for largest books as well.

German type designer Jürgen Brinckmann created this blackletter FontFont in 1993. The font is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, poster and billboards as well as software and gaming. FF Humanist provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional oldstyle figures.

The story of Humana begins with an exclusive volume about some manuscripts in Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, Italy. The title page uses the characters upon which I designed Humana. I suppose they were drawn for that volume. Examining the reproductions in the book I found that the characters on the title page immitate the lettering in a manuscript from the 15th century with Petrarca's Rime volgari". Not bad as origin! But I cannot free myself from the thought that there may be a typeface with that looks, not just a few characters drawn for that volume. My reference books could not give me any answer about that. The name Humana refers to the humanistic era from which the characters originate. Humana was released in 1994.

A calligrapher, graphic designer and teacher, Duško Trifunović of Belgrade created this handsome calligraphic typeface called Sloboda. It has an open design, an outline of sorts, and though the lowercase is small and compact, it sets beautifully in text. The generously sized uppercase has a swash flavor to it yet works harmoniously with itself. This OpenType font has extra ligatures and the extended character set supports Central Europe.

Designed by Jochen Hasinger of Frankfurt, Germany, Covent BT is an unconventional geometric sans serif typeface, featuring rounded terminal ends and a stencil-like break of the contour in some glyphs. At first glance you might think of it as a display typeface, but the generous x-height and openness of the lowercase makes Covent BT very legible at text sizes. Central Europe and Cyrillic is supported in the extended glyph set. Each weight contains 485 glyphs and includes some alternate figures, some upper and lowercase alternates, as well as others, all accessible via OpenType features. Covent BT Symbols is a stylized geometric symbol font, intended to stand alone or used as a companion to the Covent BT typefaces. The array of glyphs covers many of the more popular icons of the day including symbols for web use, numbers, sports, travel and astrology, to name a few, each with its own unique stylized interpretation.

Roundhand was created by Matthew Carter in 1966 on the basis of handwriting by Charles Snell, an English calligrapher of XVII-XVIII known in particular by his "The Pen-man's Treasury Open'd" written in 1694. The typeface has continuous cursive shapes with oval aspect, high contrast emphasized by abrupt transitions from thin to thick and regularity of slope. Its capitals are often used as initials in combinations with other typefaces. The current digital version of the typeface has 3 styles of different weights. Roundhand is clear and easy to read and is well-suited for medium size texts and headlines. It will work well in invitations, menus, packaging, and advertising accentuating elegance and the subtle nature of the content. The Cyrillic version was developed by Vladimir Yefimov and Isabella Chaeva. Released by ParaType in 2013.

Boris Mahovac has adapted a friend’s handwriting in this new font called Kloi (pronounced Chlo – ee). It has a very casual feel and includes alternative swash glyphs of some key characters as well as some extra ligatures. Taking advantage of the ligature and contextual swash features in OpenType, the alternate glyphs automatically replace the standard glyphs when appropriate, creating a very unique look. Available in PostScript OpenType format, Kloi’s extended glyph set covers the Western and Central European, Baltic and Turkish languages.

Roelandt BT is another beautiful script font drawn by calligrapher Rob Leuschke. Perfect for informal invitations and documents, the standard semi-connecting glyphs are simple, yet elegant. An OpenType font, Roelandt also contains a set of Swash characters. Using the OT Swash feature to access these alternate glyphs, you can quickly transform your text into a stylish and more formal presentation complete with generously sized uppercase swashes. Basic and alternative glyphs in the font support Central Europe.

Nevia BT is a four weight text family loaded with subtle design nuances. These OpenType Pro fonts support many OT features including smallcaps, oldstyle figures, contextual swashes, ornaments, discretionary ligatures, fractions and much more. The extended character set supports both Western European and Central European languages.

Based on an engravers’ pattern plate, this outline form deriving from an English roundhand was fitted to linecasting matrices by Intertype about 1940.

Indoo is a modular geometric design that owes much to the typeface designs of Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) and the De Stijl principles of abstraction, simplicity, clarity and harmony. That inspiration, combined with the lettering of signage often found in the Indian quarter of Paris, led to the connecting block letter motif of Indoo. The text fonts are joined by a common horizontal stroke positioned at the baseline. There is an accompanying Ornament font for building borders that includes various stylized fleurons and the like. Each font has a drop shadow companion that allows you to build three-dimensional and multi-colored lettering.

A personal calligraphic series commissioned by Bitstream from Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. Although Carmina BT is a neutral design, optimized for use in digital publishing, Zapf von Hesse’s unique calligraphic spirit is still quite visible in the family’s letterforms. This is not surprising, as all of Zapf von Hesse’s typefaces are calligraphic in nature. Yet Carmina BT is suitable for almost any conceivable digital text application, from book design up through signage use.

Arkeo BT is designer Brian Sooy's first typeface family published by Bitstream. Given very few design elements to work with, Brian has designed a bitmap font that is unique and very readable. There are three widths, Condensed, Regular and Extended. In our opinion, pixels never looked so good. Arkeo performs equally well on screen and as on paper. The OpenType versions include an extended character set featuring oldstyle figures, fractions and additional f-ligatures. Design was begun in late 2001 and completed in 2002. Sooy asked Bitstream to critique, which we did gladly. We also added additional characters for OpenType. This included alternate figure set, an extended set of fractions and additional f-ligatures. Sooy used preliminary versions for setting parts of the TypeCon 2002 material and website.

Futura is the fully developed prototype of the twentieth century Geometric Sanserif. The form is ancient, Greek capitals being inscribed by the Cretans twenty-five hundred years ago at the time of Pythagoras in the Gortyn Code, by the Imperial Romans, notably in the tomb of the Scipios, by classical revival architects in eighteenth century London, which formed the basis for Caslon’s first sanserif typeface in 1817. Some aspects of the Geometric sanserif survived in the flood of Gothics that followed, particularly in the work of Vincent Figgins. In 1927, stimulated by the Bauhaus experiments in geometric form and the Ludwig & Mayer typeface Erbar, Paul Renner sketched a set of Bauhaus forms; working from these, the professional letter design office at Bauer reinvented the sanserif based on strokes of even weight, perfect circles and isosceles triangles and brought the Universal Alphabet and Erbar to their definitive typographic form. Futura became the most popular sanserif of the middle years of the twentieth century. Ironically, given its generic past, Futura is the only typeface to have been granted registration under copyright as an original work of art, and, further irony, given the key part played by the Bauer letter design office, the full copyright belongs to Renner and his heirs. This decision in a Frankfurt court implies that a further small group of older typefaces may also be covered by copyright in Germany, particularly those designed for Stempel by Hermann Zapf. This situation appears to be limited to this small group of faces in this one country, although protection of designers’ rights in newer typefaces is now possible in France and Germany through legislation deriving from the 1973 Vienna Treaty for the protection of typefaces. Mergenthaler’s Spartan is a close copy of Futura; Ludlow’s Tempo is less close. Functional yet friendly, logical yet not overintellectual, German yet anti-Nazi... with hindsight the choice of Futura as Volkswagen’s ad font since the 1960s looks inevitable.

Charles Gibbons' Fleischman BT Pro revives J.M. Fleischman's quirky and elegant text faces of the 1730s. Born in Germany, Fleischman worked in Holland, primarily at Enschedé en Zonen where he cut dozens of faces. His types represent some of the earliest examples of the Transitional style, predating and influencing the work of Fournier, Baskerville, and Bodoni. They were wildly popular in their day, used for everything from newspapers to currency, and Fleischman himself has enjoyed a renaissance of late. Fleischman BT Pro preserves the feel of the printed metal types while expanding the original to include four OpenType fonts: roman, italic, bold, and bold italic. They all include small caps, old style and lining figures, discretionary and historical ligatures, ornaments, and superiors. Fleischman Pro also supports Western, Central European, and Eastern European languages.

Cooper Black, commissioned by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, is the best known of Oswald Cooper’s typefaces. Bitstream has expanded the 1921 original into a complete series of round-edged text faces.

Allen Zuk has designed this wacky typeface that he calls KOOKY. Each character has three variants that bounce about the baseline. The effect is a randomly casual appearance that is great for headlines. The OpenType version does this automatically by using contextual alternates in applications that recognize this option.

Eroxion was designed by Eduardo Manso in 1997. It is a good example of degenerative typographic design, borrowing from techniques first explored in the early 1990s by the designers at Letterror.

Eduardo Manso has brought new meaning to the word distressed. The contours of Rina have been randomly inverted, spiked and split to create this agitated look. Surprisingly, Rina remains legible. And just to turn the screw a little more, Manso created an outline version, Rina Linea.

Bonislawsky pulls off a beauty in these letterforms rendered with barbed wire. In our view, it couldn't have been done better. Now you can contain the animal in you with style.

Stephen Chick, of In Your Typeface Productions (IYTP) foundry, has created this rather prickly type design. Although for display, it is surprisingly legible at smaller point sizes. There is an Inline version, and also an Inline Extra version, which has only the inner contours of the Inline itself, which can be combined with the Regular to create cool two-color effects. The extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Created by Italian graphic designer and illustrator Lorenzo Lalatta, Orchestra brings a whimsical yet elegant spin to Latin typography. Every letterform is cleverly adapted from the shape of a musical instrument or musician. Mr. Lalatta has even disguised himself as the bullet glyph. Perfect for use as initial letters or in special invitations, these caricatures allow for delightful color embellishment as well. Don't be shy about wielding this baton!