Meet "Neue Comic," a rounded typeface making a bold entrance into the design scene, aiming to redefine the delicate balance between playfulness and practicality in typography. Crafted with the recognition that rounded aesthetics enhance information retention and legibility, Neue Comic delivers a distinct, rhythmic design that breaks through traditional design boundaries. Reflecting on the divisive legacy of Comic Sans, we pondered: Is it really deserving of all the hate? Comic Sans entered the typography scene in 1994 with the noble goal of injecting fun into casual contexts. However, it fell victim to misuse and eventually succumbed to an undeserved sense of imposter syndrome. This prompted us to create a typeface that transcends these limitations. Inspired by the non-connecting script of comic book lettering, Neue Comic seeks to recapture the charm of the '90s while acknowledging the genuine intention behind Comic Sans—offering accessibility and friendliness. Avoiding the pitfalls of overuse, Neue Comic presents itself with seven weights and corresponding obliques, showcasing the flexibility of a variable version. Specifications: - Files included: Neue Comic, including obliques - Multi-language support (Central, Eastern, Western European languages) - OpenType Features (Superscript and Subscript Numerals, Fractions, Oldstyle figures) Thanks for viewing, Unio.

Looking for something new for setting powerful headlines? Need a font that can create logos with ease? How about something masculine, a design with authority and panache? Then ITC’s newest typeface, ITC Sportbet™, may be the perfect choice. ITC Sportbet is a design that should be set tight, creating an arresting graphic image as well as words. Although a capital-only typeface, it benefits from a large suite of alternate characters that enable individual words and headlines to be customized with a distinctive personality. In addition to the obvious power of ITC Sportbet’s square-jawed character shapes, it’s fun to use. Exchange one or two letters with their alternative designs and a brand new headline or logo appears. ITC Sportbet was designed by Dane Wilson, the principal of the London-based design firm of Dane Design. Although this is his first commercial typeface design, Wilson has ample experience creating logos and custom typefaces for corporate branding. In fact, Sportbet grew out of such a project. “The idea initially came from wanting to provide a client with a stylish, modern and graphically impactful corporate identity logo font,” recalls Wilson. “Although the first sketches looked promising as a typeface, because of time and budget constraints, developing an entire alphabet would be overambitious.” Not to be deterred, Wilson continued to work on the design when time permitted. He eventually completed the font and started final application tests. The results looked good to Wilson, but he felt that the design was missing something. “I hit upon the idea of breaking out the left side of all the closed counters,” Wilson wrote about the design. “This simple device gave Sportbet the kick it needed.” Although one weight and a capital-only typeface, Wilson’s ITC Sportbet should prove to be a powerful and versatile communicator.

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.

I've always been in love with fat didones. That’s the reason of Posh. In search of something unique, I started this family back in 2013 with the aim of creating the fattest yet readable bodonian typeface in the market: It was a challenge, because roman fonts need generous counters (or what some call white spaces) and taking them to the extreme of inexistence attempted against the construction of many glyphs. Ears, dots, terminals and serifs always need some extra space so I had to find the exact point of boldness to make characters which have those attributes work well in the middle of those which haven't. (1) After a while, I felt I was again ‘in my element’: Big contrasted letters, sexy and elegant curves, and that Lubalinesque feeling that characterise my fonts. (2) Words written with Posh are a explosion of elegance and sensuality due to the fact that its didone attributes were exaggerated. Since it’s full of alternate glyphs, one can change and choose them until a nice block of ‘‘black’’ is achieved. (3) To accompany the regular style, I designed Posh Inline, a font with the same quantity of glyphs than the regular one; an all caps style called Posh Capitals, and also a really playful Italic version. I hope you find this one delicious like I do! This font is dedicated to all who understand letters are not just meant to be read, but also to be appreciated in group and individually. Enjoy it. NOTES (1) In example, it can be easy to design a fat letter ‘n’ with almost no counter, but really tough to make a satisfactory letter ‘s’ with serifs to match that ‘n’. (2) Also, it wasn't my first attempt in fat didones. Take a look at my font Reina, made in 2012. (3) Posters above show many words with ball terminals that seem to dance above and below the words in order to fill those “undesired” blank spaces.

TT Fellows useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options There can't be too many universal fonts! Meet TT Fellows, a new workhorse whose functionality allows you to comfortably use the font in a variety of projects. Calm and neutral at first glance, the mood of TT Fellows can change. Working with the typeface, you can reveal its soft and friendly nature, or even the brutal one, for example, by typing the text exclusively in capital letters in the bold style. TT Fellows is easy to use and perfect for setting large text arrays. Thanks to the font's uniwidth and versatility, the font is ideal for use on websites or in periodicals. Bold styles will work harmoniously in headlines or as accents in print or on packaging. TT Fellows is a humanist sans serif with a mechanical touch. With its open shapes, the friendly neutral character of thin weights and an even softer character in bold weights, the new typeface differs in character from the classic TT Norms® and TT Commons sans serifs, while still offering the same functionality. Calm regular styles differ from bold, deliberately display and more expressive ones. By the way, TT Fellows is a unwidth typeface. It was important for us that the user could change the styles, knowing that the layout will not suffer. The typeface features equal width proportions, open apertures, and slightly squared ovals, which associatively brings it closer to other popular modern fonts. Since the idea of the typeface was focused on it being a uniwidth typeface, we needed to fit the bold styles into the regular em squares, which led to interesting graphic solutions that are noticeable, for example, in the k and ж characters, in which the branches are cut directly into the stems. TT Fellows consists of 19 styles: 9 upright, 9 italic and 1 variable, each with over 700 glyphs. The font has 26 useful OpenType features. For example, there is a switch to single-part versions of letters a and y, fractions, tabular characters, case versions of punctuation, and localized versions of characters for different languages. There is a ligature for a combination of two characters of a complex design fl. TT Fellows font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

A typeface that celebrates marching to the beat of your own drum. Snare is a jazzy little display type that presents like a stencil but behaves in its own way.Featuring angled section breaks and variable heights, Snare keeps each character’s footprint steady as as its heights change, revealing unique crossbars, periscoping capitals and deep-sinking descenders. Because each character follows its own rules, the more each word grows, the more it shows the beautiful rhythm of variety. Or stretch individual characters to shape the contours of your words. Beyond just being playful, fun to dress in colors, and delightfully useful for tight spaces,Snare’s lanky verticals and nervous energy reflect the time it was created. In this second pandemic spring, Snare brings up the drumroll-expectant heartbeat of our uncertainty, and the wish that when we can all meet again, our newfound weirdnesses will find a home in the world. The Snare font family includes one uppercase alphabet with two lowercase variants and comes in ten standard weights-which-are-just-really-heights (.otf) and as a variable type(.ttf) for designers using compatible platforms. Snare was designed by Alexander Wright and In-House International and developed byRodrigo Fuenzalida at FragType. In-House International’s foundry was launched in the summer of 2020 to offer bold, experimental, display typefaces that tell a story. Our previous releases have been featured on Design Milk, DesignBoom, Slanted and all sorts of exciting places.

Caltic-Holiday, Caltic-Festival, and Caltic-Straight are three eye-catching, very bold typefaces that are suitable for posters and signage. Caltic-Holiday and Caltic-Festival base letter shapes on trapezoids with curved sides but with curves that are reversed going from one to the other. Caltic-Straight has letters based on trapezoids with straight sides. None are suited for text and with their built-in spacing will not work as all upper-case or all lower-case. All three come in two widths, regular and wide, giving the Caltic family six members. Caltic has nothing to do with Celts. The Calt refers to the calt or contextual alternative OpenType feature that makes this typeface work. When the letters on the upper-case keys alternate with the letters on the lower-case keys, they fit snuggly together. As long as the user has a word processor that supports the contextual alternatives feature, there is no need for the user to alternate letters; the calt feature does it automatically. Although the fonts seem similar to hand-drawn lettering that was done on posters and signs during the hippie era of the 1960s and 1970s, I can find nothing quite like them. My inspiration for them is older, in a newspaper from 1932 that led to the typeface family PoultySign. Caltic (and Lentzers) are the result of seeing what else I could do with the inspiration that sprang from that 1932 newspaper.

Zulia is located in the west of Venezuela and it is the state in where Joluvian grew up. It is a region of sunshine, high temperatures, oil and cheerful people, although we choose the name to honor his mother who is from there (zuliana) and who is proud of her land and everything that it represents the area. Zulia is also his first typographic project. It is based on two of his favourite calligraphic styles: italic and brush pen. He started with simple and contrasted strokes on paper with brush and marker. After that he developed the full alphabet and its various options for each letter, starting from a set of handmade forms that could be connected in different ways according to the user needs. What motivates him to involve this style was to create a differentiation with his daily work by generating a heavier type, contrasted and low rise. Zulia finally got life of its own with the participation of Alejandro Paul and a feedback of techniques and skills that were generated with the duo work. Zulia is not just a typeface, Zulia is his love of letters.

One design sparks another. As Alejandro Paul experimented with the strokes and curves of the monoline script Business Penmanship, he discovered interesting new forms and shapes that didn't fit the Spencerian theme of that typeface. These forms simmered in Ale’s subconscious over the next three years, during which time he visited New York City, pored over rare type specimen books in the New York Public Library, and explored Brooklyn’s neighborhoods. Brownstone, the face born from these explorations, is an original 21st-century design, yet one subtly infused with historical and cultural references -- keen observers might spot influences from decorative typefaces of 19th-century foundries. And just as faces from that era were influenced by contemporary architecture, the frames included with Brownstone echo the ornate iron railings of Park Slope’s row houses. (There’s also a slight 1960s vibe to Brownstone, of novelty swash-sans photocompositing faces, that can be played up at your discretion.) Influences aside, Brownstone has broad appeal to modern audiences. A soft, monoline sans-serif, with elements of Swiss geometry (see the ‘k’ and ‘x’), its marriage of highly legible, draftsman-like letterforms with decorative swashes and ornaments reflects the old-meets-new aesthetic of the DIY craft culture seen in Brooklyn and other urban centers. It’s ornamental but unfussy, romantic but understated. Brownstone includes character sets for Latin-based languages, including Western and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Maltese, Celtic and Welsh. Over 1500 glyphs, including small capitals, swash characters, alternates, and ligatures, in both Light and Thin weights. Ornamental frames are also included in both weights. The Brownstone Frames fonts are available as separate fonts in the new Brownstone Slab family.

Taca is a typeface built around a shape that Portuguese designer Rúben R Dias calls a “squircle” — neither square nor circle. We usually associate the rounded, convex box with the television screens of the 1960s and Aldo Novarese’s classic typeface, Eurostile. But whereas Eurostile is cold and machined, Taca is warm and rugged, as if it was molded from clay or carved from stone. Taca’s organic nature is also derived from another unique feature: rounded crotches at the right angles where perpendicular strokes meet. This subtle finish, along with blunt stroke endings, softens the otherwise rigid skeleton. With such a strong conceptual vision, Taca could be relegated to the bin of experimental designs, severely limited in their application. But that fate is usually born of a less experienced maker. As a teacher, designer, and letterpress printer, Dias is a type user, keenly aware of the functional requirements of good type. Taca is therefore not a slave to its concept, but a working font family, effective in various sizes and environments. Its lettershapes break away from the base shape whenever it makes sense for legibility, while still maintaining the flavor of the design as a whole. That said, a set of squircle-shaped alternates give the user the flexibility to get more stylized if the situation calls for it. Fitting to its functional aims, Taca has many of the features one expects of a proper text font: upper and lowercase figures, case-sensitive punctuation, and Extended Latin language support. The simplicity, openness, and squareness of Taca’s forms also make it an ideal design for the pixel grid of screen displays.

Lythmore This font is called Lythmore and is inspired by Lithos. Lithos was originally designed for Adobe by Carol Twombly in 1990, based it on the lettering from ancient Greek inscriptions. The Capitals are similar in feel and design, but is totally original and built from scratch. It is designed to be similar intentionally, but it is not a clone or rip off. Lithos is an example of a simple blocky san serif font style, with subtly concave sides, angled ends, and off centred curves. Lythmore is also an example of that same style. But is also different in places where I felt it could be improved. And it has a complete lower case set, which Lithos doesn't. I built Lythmore with 8 different weights. Lythmore can be very effective when used in advertising and general display work, but it can also be used for much more. Although it was never designed to be body copy, when used as such, it is still perfectly readable and adds its own version of sans serif style and flavour. I have included two versions of the Lythmore family. Lythmore A and Lythmore B. In the Lythmore A family, the lighter 4 weights all vary in weight in both the horizontal and vertical axis. The heavier 4 weights all vary in the horizontal axis only. In the Lythmore B family, the transition is even in both directions across the entire family. The result of this difference is that the A and B versions difference is most noticeable between the Regular and Medium weights. While the extreme ends of each family version are virtually identical.

Inka is the name by which the closest-ones called my partner. Inka is also the name of a text typeface – in its form very friendly and welcoming. The same way as relationships develop through the life, text typefaces develop, too. I had started the work on this typeface about the same time as I met Inka, while reaching the final output has been a long and progressive process. Inka is a modern serif typeface with wide universality in functions (various editorial usages as books, magazines, annual reports…). The concept and the scope of the complete type family are based on the principle of optical sizes of the typeface designed for the particular use of the size of typesetting. Inka consists of several drawing variations for the typesetting of small sizes (Small), text typesetting (Text), larger typesetting sizes (Title), and headlines sizes (Display). Two constructive alternatives, differing in the height of the construction of the font signs, further extend the variability of the usage of the typeface. Inka A has classical proportions ideal for book typesetting. Inka B has lower ascenders and descenders, lower uppercase glyphs and numbers. Typeface with such construction allows us to use the typesetting efficiently while using tighter leading and still looking more contemporary. Each of the font set (Display, Title, Text, Small) consists of four weights (Regular, Medium, Bold, Black), each has wide character set and a lot of OpenType features. “Inka is dedicated to Inka.”

Protipo helps information designers work smarter. Veronika Burian and José Scaglione’s Protipo type family is an information designer’s toolbox: a low-contrast sans of three text widths with a separate headline family, accompanied by an impressive two-weight icon set, and working with the advanced variable (VAR) font format. From annual reports and wayfinding to front page infographics and poster use, designers consistently turn to the simplicity and starkness of grotesque sans fonts to get their point across. Protipo is made for such environments. When designing information you may start with the headline, which in the case of this family is called Protipo Compact and comes in eight weights. From Hairline to Black, set it large, overlap it, or let it run off the page. Protipo Compact was made to hit hard and attract attention with a different character set and different proportions than the three text fonts. It sets the stage for what’s to come. Great information designers are aces at melding form and function, so we’ve stacked the Protipo family with Narrow, Regular, and Wide versions as a way of organising your information and directing the reader. Each width has seven distinct weights (light to bold) and italics, while maintaining the round-rect shapes of its DNA. Subtle details amplify its place in the typographic universe, like an ‘a’ and ‘e’ that go from solid to supple when italicising, an ‘f’ that gains an italic descender, two versions of the lowercase ‘r’ and ‘l’, and clipped corners on diagonals to keep the tight fit inherent to this kind of design work. Protipo is not meant to be loudmouthed, but stakes its claim through refinement, breadth, and impact. Some changes at first don’t seem substantial, but the Protipo family doesn’t handle text like most in its category. Protipo helps readers find and process data in a clear and unequivocal way and accounts for the complexity involved in rendering large amounts of information while still appealing to aesthetics. Protipo is ideal in all informative situations: apps, infographics, UI, wayfinding, transport, posters, display, and even internet memes. Add to all this the icon sets and upcoming variable font capability, and you’re assured a level of creativity, productivity, and impact on a much greater scale.

Get ready to unwrap a typographic delight with Frosty Xmas, the holiday-themed serif font designed to infuse your projects with festive charm and timeless elegance. With its soft round corners, delicate serifs, and all-uppercase characters, Frosty Xmas exudes a timeless charm that complements a wide range of holiday designs. Its classic serif letters, adorned with swirls, swashes, and star elements, add a touch of whimsy and magic to your creations. Whether you're crafting holiday cards, designing festive branding, or creating typographic posters that echo the joy of the season, Frosty Xmas is your go-to companion. Its versatility knows no bounds, making it equally suited for standard branding, logo design, and a wide array of creative ventures. But that's not all – Frosty Xmas comes bundled with 40 hand-drawn holiday doodles, adding an extra layer of whimsy to your projects. From snowflakes to stockings, candy canes to Christmas trees, these doodles are the perfect embellishments for all your holiday-themed endeavors. Crafted with over 450 carefully designed glyphs, Frosty Xmas supports over 90 languages, making it a versatile tool for designers and crafters worldwide. Whether you're creating holiday greeting cards, packaging labels, or typography posters, Frosty Xmas will infuse your designs with festive cheer. Elevate your designs, captivate your audience, and make this holiday season truly memorable with Frosty Xmas. The magic begins with each letter – are you ready to unwrap the joy? Happy designing and Merry Frosty Xmas! 🎄✨

The Gill Sans® Nova typeface, by Monotype Studio designer George Ryan, expands the much-loved Gill Sans family from 18 to 43 fonts and features a coordinated range of roman and condensed designs. Several new display fonts are available, including a suite of six inline weights, shadowed outline fonts that were never digitized and Gill Sans Nova Deco that was previously withdrawn from the Monotype library. A variety of OpenType® features are supported that make it possible to include experimental characters from different points in Gill Sans’s long history, including pointed diagonals on ‘A’, ‘V’ and ‘W’ and alternatives for ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q.’ Proportional figures are also available as an alternative to the tabular designs. The Gill Sans Nova family has a large character set that supports Latin, Greek and Cyrillic languages. The display weights support Latin only. “Gill Sans was fast to strike a chord with people after its initial 1928 release and quickly became popular,” explains Ryan. “It’s been adapted for every publishing technology, from mechanical typesetting to digital imaging – always receiving the best treatment from Monotype in each iteration. This is especially true with all that we’ve added to the new series, while still retaining the familiarity of Gill Sans. My goal was to ensure clarity across digital environments, add missing weights, and bring more personality to the family with new display fonts, as well as Gill-inspired alternate characters.” The Gill Sans Nova typeface family is part of the new Eric Gill Series, drawing on Monotype's heritage to remaster and expand and revitalize Eric Gill’s body of work, with more weights, more characters and more languages to meet a wide range of design requirements. The Series also brings to life new elements inspired by some of Gill’s unreleased work, recently discovered in Monotype’s archive of original typeface drawings, designer correspondence and documents from the last century.

Introducing "Korge", a captivating and versatile retro bold slab serif font that seamlessly marries vintage aesthetics with modern functionality. With its bold design, serif form, and a trio of regular, rounded, and extruded versions, Korge offers a wealth of creative possibilities for your design ventures. Korge is a font that transports your projects back to the golden eras of design. Its bold and distinct serifs evoke a sense of nostalgia, lending your creations a classic and enduring appeal. Korge provides not one, but three distinct styles to choose from. The regular version exudes a commanding presence, while the rounded variant softens the edges for a more approachable feel. The extruded version adds depth and dimension, giving your text a 3D, eye-catching quality. Korge is a font that speaks the language of design across borders. With its multi-language support and PUA encoding, it ensures your message resonates with audiences from diverse linguistic backgrounds. From logo design to branding, packaging, posters, and beyond, Korge adapts seamlessly to a wide array of design projects. Its bold slab serifs demand attention, making sure your message is delivered with both authority and style. Korge invites you to embark on a journey of creative exploration. Craft memorable headlines, iconic logos, or striking signage – this font is your canvas for pushing the boundaries of design. With Korge, the possibilities are limitless. Its vintage-inspired bold slab serif design, multi-language support, and versatile styles make it the ideal choice for designers seeking to infuse their projects with timeless charm and contemporary appeal. Get ready to bring your visions to life with Korge, where classic meets cutting-edge. ——— Korge features: A full set of Uppercase & Lowercase letters Numbers and punctuation Multilingual language support PUA Encoded Characters OpenType Features +237 Total Glyphs Rounded Style + Regular Style Extruded Style Korge Includes: Korge Regular Korge Regular Extruded Left Korge Regular Extruded Right Korge Regular Extruded Left Italic Korge Regular Extruded Right Italic Korge Rounded Korge Rounded Extruded Left Korge Rounded Extruded Right Italic Korge Rounded Extruded Left Korge Rounded Extruded Right Italic

In July 2014, using my light pen, I completed the work in designing the font - Nizar, which was named in honor of the great poet Nizar Qabbani who inspired millions through poetry and prose. The font depends mainly on the characteristics of the traditional Ruq'ah handwriting, but the spirit of the letters tend to embrace the distinguished style that we knew of the poet in his hand-written poetry books. Due to the fact that I could not find all the alphabets in the great poet's handwriting, I adopted the method of measurement and prediction for structure of the missing letters, Which resulted in a new style of the Ruq'ah Typeface; a closer look at the font highlights the common characteristics of all the usual Ruq'ah writings, which are the height of the character "Alef" and spaces and formation on the line, the contextual replacement and convergence of when a letter meets another, closed and open letters, letters coming down from the baseline, and the forms of dots. That been said, hidden touches in the details of Nizar Typeface can be observed, the characters are all dependent on one pen stroke thickness, and are attracted to the baseline as much as possible when vertically and horizontally formed, and the distance between words and lines grows leading to creating both an aesthetic and typographical touch distinguishing this font from the conventional Ruq'ah – which can be found in some of my previous Ruq'ah projects. It is important to mention that after the completion of the Arabic characters and punctuation, I began drawing the Latin alphabets, punctuation and necessary symbols. I cannot fail to also note that the Arabic characters include the Persian, and the Urdu characters. This Typeface is fit to be used in lengthy texts, especially in literary works, artistic print, and diverse visual display, giving the design striking features, modernity and distinction. Sultan Mohammed Saeed

The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

SIAS opens a new chapter in Irish vernacular typography: the Andron-2-Irish font family. The genes of the insular typographic heritage have been blended with the timeless classical style of the versatile Andron series. Whereas most Irish-style fonts available more or less stick to ancient designs, Andron-2-EIR is different: it’s an entirely new design in which Irishness meets the beauty of a matured Venetian Roman text face. Envision a new horizon for setting Irish text in its own visual mode! Now you can utilize Italics, Semibold and Small capitals for Irish just as you have been doing in other languages for a long time. But the icing on the cake is the fifth font: Andron Irish Middlecase honours the rich medieval tradition of Ireland by a special uncial-style glyph set. It corresponds to the Andron MC series. Last but not least the Irish type connoisseur will relish this font package for it’s unique utilization of Opentype functionality. In Opentype-aware applications, by just ticking a box you can switch to the special insular forms of s and r. By ticking another box you can transform the text from modern-day orthography to the traditional spelling with lenited consonants. This built-in intelligence has never been implemented in any Irish font before. Briefly, the Opentype substitution features are: [Ligatures] – default basic f-ligatures; [Descretionary Ligatures] – more ligatures for typographic reason, mainly t- and long-s-combinations; [Style set 1] – turns all lowercase r and s into their insular glyph variants; [Style set 2] – replaces all consonant-h digraphs by dotted consonants (ḃċḋḟġṁṗṡẛṫ, ḂĊḊḞĠṀṖṠṪ), works for lowercase, uppercase and upper-lowercase alike; [Style set 3] – provides another range of additional special ligatures (for Regular and Italic only); [Oldstyle figures] – turns the default lining figures into proportional oldstyle figures. Andron Irish will also perfectly combine with every other Andron product in mixed settings. For an overview please go to the SIAS main page. For a quick reference go to Andron Latin, Andron Greek, Andron English or Andron MC. For more wonderful new Irish fonts look at Hibernica and Ardagh!

Bookish A little bit bookish, but quietly elegant and well-proportioned, FS Sally is a graceful font family. It’s a refreshingly uncomplicated design that brings sophistication to text and display type, and a distinctive aplomb to both large and small volumes of text. Hidden talents There’s more to FS Sally than meets the eye. Choose Standard for the Latin alphabet or Pro if you work with Cyrillic and Greek typography. There’s a large range of special features, including elegant small caps and a set of discretionary ligatures to add a traditional flavour to figures and fraction sets. Rhythmic There’s a rhythm and flow to FS Sally – the result of the classic but asymmetric design of its serifed feet and shoulders. The inward curve of the serif at the shoulder and the outward curve at the foot subliminally guide the eye through each letterform, and the flicked feet of the “a”, “d” and “u” add an extra kick of energy to the rhythm. The italic forms have their own flow, too, with a pen-like fluency that retains the formal discipline required for a text type. Regular to heavy FS Sally’s five weights, all with italics, cover every kind of print application. The regular weight is elegant in display and an easy read in longer texts. A subtle step up from the regular is the medium, which was created to deliver a stronger colour and finish in poorer printing conditions. The semibold offers a strong alternative to the regular at smaller sizes, and its intermediate feel suits it to sub-headings, title pages and calmer designs. The bold works excellently in book and title headings, and FS Sally Heavy lends weight and punch to poster headlines and logotypes.

Bookish A little bit bookish, but quietly elegant and well-proportioned, FS Sally is a graceful font family. It’s a refreshingly uncomplicated design that brings sophistication to text and display type, and a distinctive aplomb to both large and small volumes of text. Hidden talents There’s more to FS Sally than meets the eye. Choose Standard for the Latin alphabet or Pro if you work with Cyrillic and Greek typography. There’s a large range of special features, including elegant small caps and a set of discretionary ligatures to add a traditional flavour to figures and fraction sets. Rhythmic There’s a rhythm and flow to FS Sally – the result of the classic but asymmetric design of its serifed feet and shoulders. The inward curve of the serif at the shoulder and the outward curve at the foot subliminally guide the eye through each letterform, and the flicked feet of the “a”, “d” and “u” add an extra kick of energy to the rhythm. The italic forms have their own flow, too, with a pen-like fluency that retains the formal discipline required for a text type. Regular to heavy FS Sally’s five weights, all with italics, cover every kind of print application. The regular weight is elegant in display and an easy read in longer texts. A subtle step up from the regular is the medium, which was created to deliver a stronger colour and finish in poorer printing conditions. The semibold offers a strong alternative to the regular at smaller sizes, and its intermediate feel suits it to sub-headings, title pages and calmer designs. The bold works excellently in book and title headings, and FS Sally Heavy lends weight and punch to poster headlines and logotypes.

Green Fairy is a chromatic font family highly ornamented for display purposes. Green Fairy’s characters have been specifically designed to accommodate its loops and ornaments following a modern typeface structure. Green Fairy has four chromatic weights: 1. Green Fairy Outline 2. Green Fairy Dots 3. Green Fairy Stencil 4. Green Fairy Full The outline weight has been created as the base or structure for the other weights. You can combine these weights as well as add colours to obtain multiple effects and type styles. Green Fairy has also three combined weights (combos) to simplify your work flow, for these occasions when you only want to use one single colour in your font: 5. Green Fairy Dots Combo 6. Green Fairy Stencil Combo 7. Green Fairy Full Combo GREEN FAIRY ORIGINS The origin of this typeface is the lettering I designed in October 2015 as part of my illustrated cocktail artwork called “Absinthe. La Fée Verte (The Green Fairy)”. Originally, this lettering only featured eight letters “AB·SINTHE” vector drawn in Illustrator. Right after creating the full-colour artwork, I designed a fountain-letterpress print version of it, in collaboration with Ladies of Letters, A.K.A. Carla Hackett and Amy Constable from Saint Gertrude Fine Printing. At the beginning of 2016 –and thanks to the project @36daysoftype– I found the motivation, and most importantly the deadline, to draw the rest of the twenty-six letters of the uppercase alphabet using Illustrator. I started 2017 having my first two calligraphy courses sold out, so I took this amazing opportunity to devote myself to Green Fairy for a few months. In February 2017, I purchased the font software Glyphs and I started to re-draw all twenty-six letters of the uppercase alphabet again. PRODUCTION PROCESS Green Fairy started being one weight, but quickly turned into a layered/chromatic font. Things were going more or less fine till I arrived to the Dots weight: 1) I started drawing squares following a grid; 2) Then, the squares turned into diamonds following the same grid; 3) Then, the grid wasn’t working so well on the round letters so I tried randomising the position of the diamonds but it didn’t work; 4) So I went back to the grid, and this time scaled down the size of the diamonds creating a visual half-tone effect. I spent over four weeks working on the Dots weight and I felt like I was in the middle of a very long tunnel and I couldn’t see the light at the end. I encountered many other problems along the way but by June 2017, I felt I was back on track again. I kept working, tweaking, re-drawing and re-adjusting, and then the diacritics came on board… And then more re-drawing, re-tweaking, re-adjusting and then numbers… And then spacing, symbols, and currencies… And then more spacing, kerning, contextual kerning for triplets… In September 2017 I told myself “that’s it, I’m going to finish it now!” But guess what? More re-tweaking, testing, hinting, testing, rendering, testing… For those of you not familiarized with typeface design, it is extremely time consuming and it requires a lot of hard work, focus and determination. This project could not have been possible without the help of these generous professionals: Jose Manuel Urós, typeface designer based in Barcelona and my teacher twice in the past; Jamie Clarke, freelance letterer and typeface designer who has released a couple of chromatic fonts recently; Troy Leinster, Australian full-time typeface designer living and working in New York City; Noe Blanco, full-time typeface designer and hinting specialist based in Catalonia; And Nicole Phillips, typographer currently relocating from Australia to New Zealand. To all of you: THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Kometa Sans is a contemporary grotesk with a certain personality. She has a steady geometric skeleton, but its appearance is rather humanistic. The precise details of the artwork, the carefully drawn true italics, the six types of numerals, the variety of alternates, the broad range of open-type features and the extensive glyph set can meet most of the contemporary typographer’s demands for a neutral, but not boring type family for both long text and display use. Among the distinctive qualities of Kometa are also the forms of ligatures (both default and discretionary). They follow the natural constructive transitions between oval parts and stems, which is an advantage to mark, at least for designers who respect the beauty of clean forms. Note the specially designed Kometa Unicase sub-family, substantially enough to exist as a separate typeface. Its elegant and expressive letterforms are boosting further the power to create outstanding design work. Kometa Unicase has original and playful, yet reasonable approach to letterforms variety. Kometa has a very broad usability range – from logotypes and poster designs to corporate identities and complex editorial projects. The contemporary Cyrillics of Kometa allows easily completion of graphically consistent multilingual corporate and artistic design projects. Designed by Kiril Zlatkov and Vassil Kateliev.

Introducing Bellefonte Typeface: Where Elegance Meets Versatility Unleash the power of elegance and versatility with Bellefonte, a captivating typeface that breathes life into your creative endeavors. Whether you're a designer, artist, or entrepreneur, Bellefonte is the perfect companion to elevate your projects and leave a lasting impression. Discover the Beauty of Bellefonte: Timeless Elegance: Inspired by the beauty of classic typography, Bellefonte exudes a timeless charm that effortlessly elevates your designs. Its graceful curves and carefully crafted letterforms add a touch of sophistication to any project, from branding and packaging to editorial layouts and invitations. Endless Versatility: Bellefonte's adaptable design seamlessly transitions across various design contexts. From captivating headlines to legible body text, this typeface ensures your message is delivered with clarity and impact, making it a versatile choice for any creative endeavor. Crafted with Precision: Meticulously designed by skilled typographers, Bellefonte boasts an exceptional level of detail and craftsmanship. Each character is thoughtfully created to ensure a flawless and professional finish, allowing your designs to stand out from the crowd. Multilingual Support: Embrace a global audience with ease as Bellefonte offers comprehensive Latin language support. Break language barriers and connect with diverse communities worldwide, enhancing the reach and impact of your projects.

New York to London via Europe The hardworking FS Koopman is a crossbred workhorse which draws inspiration from Swiss and Germanic grotesks, American gothics and early British grotesques, but refuses to fit neatly into any of these categories. Its neither one nor the other, but all of the above. Fontsmith designers Andy Lethbridge and Stuart de Rozario decided to take the characteristics they admired from each category and distill them down into one functional family. Neo meets Neue FS Koopman aims to swim against the tide of Helvetica-ish derivatives by bringing some personality and soul to a genre that all too often ends up feeling bland and sterile. FS Koopman subtly embraces the quirkiness and charm often seen in early twentieth century designs but pairs this with the functionality of later pioneers of the genre. It’s a grotesque isn’t it? The term grotesque surfaced around the early 1800s and refers to the early sans serif designs that many initially believed were strange or ‘grotesque’ due to their lack of elegant serifs. Later variations became known as neo-grotesques and this moniker stuck around even after they gained mass popularity. Some American variants became known as gothics. FS Koopman takes cues from all three categories and blends them into one cohesive design.

Humanist sans in 8 styles Designed by Jean François Porchez, Le Monde Sans is a sanserif based on Le Monde Journal — a practice that become commonplace from early nineties. Designed originally in 1994 for the Le Monde newspapers, it was expended over the years to the large family we know today. Le Monde Sans features a “traditional g” in addition to the usual 1994’s g. Le Monde Sans is offered in numerous weights — in roman, italic to meet all kinds of situations. It will help designers to select the best weights depending their needs, from glossy paper printing to high resolution screen. Superfamily The design of Le Monde Sans continues the basic common structure found in the members of the Le Monde family: its proportions, a relatively narrow width, a fairly oblique axis, etc. The typographer can, at all times, switch between Sans & Journal or Courrier without any disruption in the composition. The verticals metrics and proportions of Le Monde Sans are calibrated to match perfectly others Typofonderie families. This family was designed in 1994 as bespoke typeface family for the French newspaper Le Monde. The family is not used any more by this newspaper from November 2005. Type Directors Club .44 1998 European Design Awards 1998

Optimum readability in small bodies with scarce interlining, under poor printing conditions such as in newspapers, where velocity and bad quality’s irregular surface papers, truly distort strokes was the challenge taken. Pobla was designed with this in mind, hence Patau present a hybrid between the conventional strokes of a serif’s classical roman type and markedly “fractured” forms inside, providing a unique personality to this typographic family, where calligraphic’s humanistic axis is visibly broken with the straight axis of the fabricated letters. Subtle details in the serifs, give it a modern look to a classic skeleton. Very pronounced ink traps get the shapes rounded in the printed product to artificially increase the average medium-eye and promote reading in the small sizes it was designed for. An absolutely handwriting look for the italics, where the rupture of the stroke marks a white’s subtle change to only whisper in the printing surface a slight difference, but without fuss and so not to break the rhythm of reading. And as we are used to, a complete set of OpenType features, where you will find small caps, fractions, ligatures, old numerals and tabular, discretionary ligatures and support for 220 languages; and all available in twelve weights to meet the needs of any newspaper printing.

FF Kievit Serif subtlety melds oldstyle design traits and a 21st century mien into a clean, straightforward suite of typefaces. As part of the FF Kievit super family it helps brands carry their voices effectively and legibly. This includes small text to display sizes, in both print and digital environments, for internal and external audiences. FF Kievit takes inspiration from classic designs like Garamond and Granjon, and is available in seven weights, plus italics. Drawn as a collaboration between Michael Abbink, Paul van der Laan, FF Kievit Serif is a natural extension to the other members of the FF Kievit super family, that also includes FF Kievit and FF Kievit Slab. FF Kievit Serif stands on its own as a multi-talented and exceptionally legible design. Large counters, a generous x-height and ample apertures ensure that FF Kievit Serif translates well to both hardcopy and interactive environments. FF Kievit Serif is available in carefully defined weights, ranging from Light to Black. The Regular, Book and Bold weights are ideally suited to long form text copy. Ligatures, several suites of numbers and small caps are also available. In addition, FF Kievit Serif benefits from the same extensive language support of the other designs in the family.

Quendel has been expanded to become Quendel Happy Family. Apart from the new Bold weight for easy distinction and emphasis, there are now four other very exciting variants, rendering different writing tools and writing materials. The basic form of Quendel was written with a Japanese bamboo tip and therefore embodies a form letter of natural flow. The new versions show other features that provide the feel of written scripts. While the styles Wood and Crayon include some alternate characters, Q Marking Pen and Q Fingertip, due to their apparently more complex enacted forms, do not need additional alternates without looking stiff or boring. The wood relief of Quendel Wood was created by a freehand wood relief drawn with oiled chalk. Quendel Marking Pen seems to be written with a felt-tip pen soon depleted. At the same time it is also reminiscent of the blooming effect, which we know from photography. The name of Quendel Fingertip suggests what can be seen - someone seems to have written with the finger in a grainy material. One would like to try it himself. The effect of broken lines which can be gained by writing with chalk as reflected in Quendel Crayon. Almost like parched sandy soil, the writing material seems to crumble.

MARIAMNE is an original design by Alex Kaczun. It is an elegant, modern and traditional interpretation based on and modeled after his successful "Contax Pro" and "New Age Gothic" typeface series. As such, it has generous proportions with clean, crisp lines—ideally suited for easy reading and long lines of copy. Alex felt that the skeleton for "Contax" was perfectly suited to transform the design into a modern version of 'old-style', somewhat reminiscent of German Black Letter. Numerous modifications where made to the body proportions, stems and shapes. True 'old-style' serifs and unusual 'cross-strokes' where added for a touch of distinction. The 'cross-strokes' where added at exactly visual mid-point on the overall heights. This gives the typeface a romantic, female-like quality to the overall design. Strong, yet delicate. Visually stimulating in appearance and function. The result is a truly unique transitional and modern design. Unlike other typefaces, MARIAMNE incorporates uniform stems throughout the capitals, lower case and figures. This gives the design a uniform appearance in overall color and strength. There is a perfect visual balance between inter-letter spacing, stem weights and proportions. The accents are equally large, bold and command attention. This font includes a large 'Pro' character set, which supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. As a result, the design is ideally suited for display copy as well as text composition. In the near future, Alex plans to expand the typeface series to include a light and heavy weight, along with true italics.