L-O-L-A Like the subject of the Kinks’ song, FS Lola is a little bit of both – a font with a rare combination of masculine and feminine. The font was inspired by the song, which itself was inspired by the night the Kinks’ manager spent dancing drunkenly in a Soho club with a beautiful woman... Or so he’d thought, until her stubble started to show halfway through the evening. Masculine/feminin Phil Garnham’s experience in designing FS Lola was similar to the one related by Ray Davies. Setting out to create a sans serif font, he realised along the way that he was actually dealing with a semi-serif. He went with it, though, and produced a font with the best masculine and feminine qualities: hard edges and corners tempered by shapes of softness and generosity, the outcome of what Phil calls an “organic” design process. “Initially, my designs were very graphic and hard but not very distinctive. By printing and redrawing the letters in pencil I achieved a softer and friendlier alphabet with a strong personality.” Broad Lola, as you’d expect, is very broad-minded. Available in five weights with italics – and fluent in central European languages – FS Lola offers a confident combination of feminine softness and male steeliness to any kind of design. As the song says, “It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world... except for Lola.

South Picene (also known as Paleo-Sabellic, Mid-Adriatic or Eastern Italic) is an extinct Italic language belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is apparently unrelated to the North Picene language, which is not understood and therefore unclassified. South Picene texts were at first relatively inscrutable even though some words were clearly Indo-European. The discovery in 1983 that two of the apparently redundant punctuation marks were in reality simplified letters led to an incremental improvement in their understanding and a first translation in 1985. Difficulties remain. It may represent a third branch of Sabellic, along with Oscan and Umbrian (and their dialects), or the whole Sabellic linguistic area may be best regarded as a linguistic continuum. The paucity of evidence from most of the 'minor dialects' contributes to these difficulties. The corpus of South Picene inscriptions consists of 23 inscriptions on stone or bronze dating from as early as the 6th century BC to as late as the 4th century BC. The dating is estimated according to the features of the letters and in some cases the archaeological context. As the known history of the Picentes does not begin until their subjugation by Rome in the 3rd century, the inscriptions open an earlier window onto their culture as far back as the late Roman Kingdom. Most are stelai or cippi of sandstone or limestone in whole or fragmentary condition sculpted for funerary contexts, but some are monumental statues.

Etrusco Now is the revival of a lead typeface originally cast in lead by Italian foundry Nebiolo in the early 1920s. Heavily inspired by the design of the Medium weight of Schelter & Giesecke's Grotesk, Etrusco was, like Cairoli, an early precursor of the modernist grotesque superfamilies: a solid, multi-purpose "work-horse" typeface family that could solve a wide range of design problems with its range of widths and weights. When designing the new incarnation of Nebiolo's Etrusco, the Italiantype team directed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mario de Libero decided to extend the original weight and width range to keep this "superfamily" approach. Etrusco Now has twenty-one styles widths in three widths of seven weights each, with matching italics; the original weights for the typeface have been collected in the Etrusco Classic subfamily. Etrusco Now new widths allowed the team to include in the design many nods and homages to other vintage classics of Nebiolo. The lighter weights of the normal width have been heavily influenced by the modernist look of Recta, while the heavy condensed and compressed widths refer to the black vertical texture of Aldo Novarese's Metropol. This infuses the typeface with a slightly vintage mood, making Etrusco at the same time warmly familiar and unexpected to eyes accustomed to the formal and cold look of late modernist grotesques like Helvetica. Contemporary but rich in slight historical quirks, Etrusco Now is perfect for any editorial and branding project that aims to be different in a subtle way. Etrusco Now's deviations from the norm are small enough to give it personality without affecting readability, while its wide range of open type features (alternates, stylistic sets, positional numbers) and language coverage make it a problem solver for any situation. Like its cousin Cairoli, Etrusco is born out of love for lost letterforms and stands like its lead ancestor from a century ago, at the crossroads between artsy craftsmanship and industrial needs.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.