Grafton Titling was designed for dramatic impact. It contemporizes old style proportions, bracketed serifs and a left-leaning stress angle with striking contrast and modern angular joins. The solid style has a timeless feel, while a flared through-line variation provides textural interest. Small caps, a complement of OpenType features, and support for diacritics and accented characters make it a robust and distinctive choice for headlines that demand attention. Through-line characters are accessible using the Stylistic Set or Stylistic Alternate OpenType feature.

I only had this bouncy curve and a photograph of a daily menu (Truite Meunière) I took outside an obscure Paris restaurant when starting the design of this font. But while working on it I suddenly started thinking about Jacques Tati the famous but almost forgotten french director of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, Jour des Fêtes, Mon Oncle, Playtime, Trafic etc. I thought about his bouncy walk and his hilarious ideas. The memories never left me while working on the font, so I decided to name the font after this great French moviemaker who gave me so many happy hours. Since Tati was a very funny character, I gave my characters a funny price. Thank you Jacques Tati, yours Gert Wiescher

Anachronic is the polished version of our Chronic font family and preserves its libertarian dna. It's kind of strong, while friendly. Because sometimes you've just got to be bold — pero sin perder la ternura jamás!

With reference to the Type Heritage Project, this font (designer unknown) was cut by Henry Brehmer of New York for the Dickinson Type Foundary of Boston in c1879 and had the original trade name of Renaissant. John F. Cumming later cut a light-face derivative called “Artistic.” A history of the un-patented face can be found at the Type Heritage Project website. Ressonant has a full character set as well as ligatures, superiors, inferiors, numerators, denominators, old style figures, and auto-fractions. There are also alternate caps for N and M as in the original, and, unlike the original, comes in four weights. This font is a documented revival of a 19th-century typeface. The year, country, designer and/or foundry of origin will be published in a series of textbooks entitled “The Type Heritage Project.” Volume I explores quintessential Victorian faces, a spectacular trove of innovative gems; you can see samples by clicking the Type Heritage Project link above.

An upright typeface family developed to meet the demand for letters to produce pupil material for handwriting as well as for reading. Upright letters with extended ascenders and descenders are ideal on screen. They facilitate word recognition. The exit strokes link words together visually, and in handwriting they lead to spontaneous joins along the baseline leading logically to a joined-up hand. Teachers can print desk strips, charts of letter families and alphabet friezes, as well as consistent material across the curriculum. Together these typefaces provide a valuable resource for special needs teachers. Typefaces developed to meet demand for letters that can be used to produce pupil material for reading as well as handwriting. Regular and Bold typefaces covering pan-European languages: 9 Latin, 6 Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, 13 Baltic, 8 Rusyn, 6 Nordic, Vietnamese. How to access Stylistic Sets of alternative letters in these fonts Cyrillic Stylistic Sets examples Greek Stylistic Sets examples Vietnamese Stylistic Sets examples

Very few letter types with the context of grunge style fonts offer hierarchies to differentiate words in sentences or paragraphs. With Navaja I developed a font family that meets this need. This family is useful to organize the information into a hierarchy with an eroded look. Its central idea mixes grotesque, geometric and humanistic letter conventions. This way, Navaja is a grunge-sans with dense proportions to make graphic design with eroded character. Its main purpose appeared when one of my customers asked me for a t-shirt design for a fan club of an important football player. For this reason its starting point were stained and muddy letters characterizing the toughness and coldness of the sport. Over time their glyphs began to imitate the robustness of "wood type & Tuscan Type" widely used in posters in the late nineteenth century. Its purpose was strengthened in a family with 6 members that when mixed they produce mind catching contrast levels ideal for designing T-shirts, stickers, flyers, brochures, posters, billboards, cinema or TV. Therefore its variants are short up and down height X combined with different widths that by working together produce information that radiates outstanding apparently destroyed controlled violence. Navaja Dingbats consists of 52 illustrations useful for frames and textures. In that vein, the origin of each member comes from skeletons of Roman and Italic calligraphy. The low amount of contrast between thick and thin lines matching the contours apparently gnawed but strictly regulated by optical adjustments equating the sum between full and empty areas. Factors such as finishes, shapes and counter internal and external forms are meticulously planned although its scruffy look which strategic arrangements are offset to provide color typographical homogeneous. And in conclusion, I have plans to continue expanding the family with more complete versions in the future.

This is a monospace font for the Braille alphabet. The idea came while exploring new ways to display the regular braille glyph ( 3 rows of 2 dots ). The glyph design is inspired by "stackable multiple board" games like the famous Vulcan chess (from Star Trek series) and the Qubic (3D tic-tac-toe). The stack is made from 3 levels, each level is a 3x3 grid with 2 "playable" cells (South-West and North-East). Each cell can be either empty, filled by a white square token or a black square token. The 3D effect is obtained by means of the classic isometric perspective. Lowercase letters use black tokens, while uppercase letters use white tokens. Most special characters (e.g. digits, *$#@, []{}() etc.. ) are also provided for special usages like program source code (see poster 5).

A friend once jokingly told me that what I really do is mine extinct arts for parts to use in modern things, like going to the scrapyard to pick up bumpers, quarter-panels and dashboards off of Datsuns and Ponies to build a shiny new Ferrari. I still kind of grin at that, but I certainly do spend a lot of time looking at old things and imagining ways they would work today. This shiny new Ferrari here is called Bibliophile, and it contains scrap heap parts from various pages by Louis Prang, the Prussian-American printer and publisher who inspired my Prangs fonts. This is my second engagement with the late 19th century man, and it’s quite a bit more intricate than just an italic Didone with a connected lowercase. Bibliophile marries Round Hand calligraphy with Italian capitals, two styles not often relayed in the same alphabet, but work together beautifully when combined well. When you combine them well with a few long-practised tricks of the trade, then mix in a few trusted features from my previous work over the years, you get my usual crazy exuberance, like 17 different shapes for the d, 21 different forms for the y, endings, beginnings, swashes, ornaments, and so on. It’s no secret that I can get carried away when I’m so consumed by an idea. — Bibliophile comes in 2 weights, each of them with over 900 glyphs covering all the latin languages. Bibliophile also comes with a bold weight, something I’m always reluctant to do with something as adventurous and complex as the structure of this historical mashup. But I couldn’t chase away the idea of increasing the contrast while maintaining the hairlines in a lowercase this narrow. Part of it was the curiosity about the outcome, and part was the sheer challenge of it. I think it turned out OK. Words set in either weight will show delicateness and elegance, and the more time you spend inside the font and micro-manage the setting, the more ways you will find to magnify either. Bibliophile can be as muted or luxurious as you want it to be. This is the kind of alphabet that fits well in fashion marketing and high-end packaging, from the very subdued to the super-exquisite. Enjoy the gleaming new vehicle made with freshly polished old parts.

The sketches for this font were made while listening to "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. I wanted a ghoulish and creepy looking font, and strangely the font was completed while listening to "Jesus Christ Superstar" Talk about creepy!

Before Bodoni, there was Didot. With the publication by Francois Ambroise Didot of Paris in 1784 of his prospectus for Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, the rococo typographical style of Fournier de Jeune was replaced with a spartan, neo-classical style that John Baskerville pioneered. The typeface Didot used for this work was of Didot’s own creation and is considered by both G. Dowding and P. Meggs to be the first modern face. Three years later, Bodoni of Parma is using a very similar face. Just as Bodoni’s typeface evolved over time, so did that of the Didot family. The eldest son of Francois Ambroise Didot, Pierre, ran the printing office; and Firmin ran the typefoundry. Pierre used the flattened, wove paper, again pioneered by Baskerville, to permit a more accurate impression and allow the use of more delicate letterforms. Firmin took full advantage of the improved paper by further refining the typeface introduced by his father. The printing of Racine’s Oeuvres in 1801 (seen in our gallery image #2) shows the symbiotic results of their efforts, especially in the marked increase in the sharpness of the serifs when compared to their owns works of only six years earlier. It has been suggested that one reason Bodoni achieved greater popularity than Didot is the thinner hairlines of Didot were more fragile when cast in metal type and thus more expensive for printers to use than Bodoni. This ceased to be a problem with the advent of phototypesetting, opening the door for a renewed interest in the work of the Didot family and especially that of Firmin Didot. Although further refinements in the Didot typeface were to come (notably the lower case ‘g’ shown in 1819), we have chosen 1801 as the nominal basis for our presentation of HiH Firmin Didot. We like the thick-thin circumflex that replaced the evenly-stroked version of 1795, possible only with the flatter wove paper. We like the unusual coat-hanger cedilla. We like the organic, leaf-like tail of the ‘Q.’ We like the strange, little number ‘2’ and the wonderfully assertive ‘4.’ And we like the distinctive and delightful awkwardness of the double-v (w). Please note that we have provided alternative versions of the upper and lower case w that are slightly more conventional than the original designs. Personally, I find the moderns (often called Didones) hard on the eyes in extended blocks of text. That does not stop me from enjoying their cold, crisp clarity. They represent the Age of Reason and the power of man’s intellect, while reflecting also its limitations. In the title pages set by Bodoni, Bulmer and Didot, I see the spare beauty of a winter landscape. That appeals to a New Englander like myself. Another aspect that appeals to me is setting a page in HiH Firmin Didot and watching people try to figure out what typeface it is. It looks a lot like Bodoni, but it isn't!

Sheet music for 1907's "Just A Little Fond Affection" had the song title hand lettered in a simple sans serif design with influences from the then-current Art Nouveau movement. This is now available as Nouveau Titling JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Ellida is a very elaborate and elegant script in the tradition of the 18th-century English calligrapher George Bickham and the 19th-century American calligrapher Platt Rogers Spencer. I really enjoyed designing this script and maybe one day I will add starting and ending letters. Doing this script was extremely time- and brain-consuming, it is a huge challenge to make calligraphic letters work on computers so that they join perfectly. That's also the reason that this has become my most expensive font so far, but I think the price is fair for the incredible amount of work I put into the script. I really need a break from scripts now! Yours very exhausted Gert Wiescher.

I often experiment with different shadow techniques. One day I accidentally scaled, instead of repositioning, some black text behind the white copy on top and noticed something very different and interesting happen. It was an intriguing effect. It took some clever handiwork to make it work properly across the entire alphabet. And behold, Eclipse was born.

Spekulatus is a made up name, and that was what I needed for a font like this. I am not sure which category it fits in: grunge, square, handmade, rough or maybe even graffiti? Well, let's just say that it fits in all 5 - or perhaps even more? All letters are handdrawn, and messed up a bit with a thin fine white liner, leaving a gentle grungy and worn effect. I've added 5 different versions of each letter, which is quite nice - not having the same letters repeating all the time!

Letrinth is a bold, informal sans-serif face. Its lower case is unusual in design; some of the characters are scaled versions of the upper-case letters. It was developed from a special alphabet I used to construct a maze and its name (LETters for a labyRINTH) reflects that origin.

Over the past couple of years I received quite a number of unusual and surprising requests to modify my type designs to suit projects of personal nature, but none top the ones that asked me to typeset and modify tattoos using Burgues Script or Adios. At first the whole idea was amusing to me, kind of like an inside joke. I had worked in corporate branding for a few years before becoming a type designer, and suddenly I was being asked to get involved in personal branding, as literally “personal” and “branding” as the expression can get. After a few such requests I began pondering the whole thing from a professional perspective. It was typography, after all, no matter how unusual the method or medium. A very personal kind of typography, too. The messages being typeset were commemorating friends, family, births, deaths, loves, principles, and things that influenced people in a deep and direct way, so much so that they chose to etch that influence on their bodies and wear it forever. And when you decide to wear something forever, style is of the essence. After digging into the tattooing scene, I have a whole new respect for tattoo artists. Wielding that machine is not easy, and driving pigment into people’s skin is an enormous responsibility. Not to mention that they're some of the very few who still use a crafty, hands-on process that is all but obsolete in other ornamentation methods. Some artists go the extra mile and take the time to develop their own lettering for tattooing purposes, and some are inventive enough to create letters based on the tattoo’s concept. But they are not the norm. Generally speaking, most tattoo artists use generic type designs to typeset words. Even the popular blackletter designs have become quite generic over the past few decades. I still cringe when I see something like Bank Script embedded into people’s skin, turning them into breathing, walking shareholder invitations or government bonds. There’s been quite a few attempts at making fonts out of whatever original tattoo designer typefaces can be found out there - wavy pseudo-comical letters, or rough thick brush scripts, but as far as I could tell a stylish skin script was never attempted in the digital age. And that’s why I decided to design Piel Script. Piel is Spanish for skin. In a way, Piel Script is a removed cousin of Burgues Script. Although the initial sketches were infused with some 1930s showcard lettering ideas (particularly those of B. Boley, whose amazing work was shown in Sign of the Times magazine), most of the important decisions about letter shapes and connectivity were reached by observing whatever strengths and weaknesses can be seen in tattoos using Burgues. Tattoos using Adios also provided some minor input. In retrospect, I suppose Affair exercised some influence as well, albeit in a minor way. I guess what I'm trying to say is there is as much of me in Piel Script as there is in any of the other major scripts I designed, even though the driving vision for it is entirely different from anything else I have ever done. I hope you like Piel Script. If you decide it to use it on your skin, I'll be very flattered. If you decide to use it on your skateboard or book cover, I'll be just as happy. Scripts can't get any more personal than this. Piel Script received the Letter2 award, where they selected the best 53 typefaces of the last decade, organised by ATypI.