This is a cute story about a mother and her son. :) About a decade ago my own mother got very interested in my work. She used to say my letters had so many swirls and dazzling swashes, and suggested my job seemed to be very fun. She wondered if she could ever try to make her own alphabet... Well, she is a civil engineer and a maths teacher, and appeared to be a little tired of exact sciences... I remember answering this, while she was listening with her typical tender look: -"Mamá... While type-design may be a really enjoyable thing to do, it also involves having a great eye and knowledge about the history of letters: nice curves and shapes require a meticulous study and, like it happens in many fields, practice makes perfect"-. Well, she raised her eyebrows at me. -"and so what?"- She didn't have any experience neither in the field of art nor in the field of graphic design so, I told her that if she really wanted to get into this she should borrow some of my calligraphic books from my beloved shelves in my office. So... she did. Some weeks after that, she came to me with many sketches made with pencils and markers: some letters where very nice and unique while others naturally needed some work. I remember she added ball terminals to all of her letters (even if they didn't need them) because that was one of the rules she imposed. After some back and forth, we had the basis for what would be today, ten years later, the seed of this lovely font Girasol. Her proposal was nice, something I was not accustomed to do, that’s why many years later I decided to watch it with fresh new eyes and finished it. While she was in charge of making the lowercase letters, I helped with the uppercase and also added my hallmark in the alternates, already seen in others of my expressive fonts. The result is an upright decorative font that follows the behavior of the copperplate nib with a naive touch that makes it really cute and useful for a wide range of products. Many alternates per glyph make Girasol a very fun to use font which will delight you. Above posters are a proof of that! This font is a gift for my mother, Susana, who, in spite of her exacts academic background, taught me that beauty can also be found in the imperfect. 1 NOTES (1) In my fonts I'm always in seek of the perfect curve. When I designed Erotica and Dream Script, I read about Fibonacci’s spirals!

In the course of the re-vitalization of its Typoart typeface inventory, Elsner+Flake decided in 2006 to offer the “Kis Antiqua” by Hildegard Korger, in a re-worked form and with an extended sortiment, as an OpenType Pro-version. After consultation with Hildegard Korger, Elsner+Flake tasked the Leipzig type designer Erhard Kaiser with the execution of the re-design and expansion of the sortiment. Detlef Schäfer writes in “Fotosatzschriften Type-Design+Schrifthersteller”, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 1989: No other printing type has ever generated as far-reaching a controversy as this typeface which Jan Tschichold called the most beautiful of all the old Antiqua types. For a long time, it was thought to have been designed by Anton Janson. In 1720 a large number of the original types were displayed in the catalog of the „Ehrhardische Gycery“ (Ehrhardt Typefoundry) in Leipzig. Recently, thanks to the research performed by Beatrice Warde and especially György Haimann, it has been proven unambiguously that the originator of this typeface was Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis (pronounced „Kisch“) who was born in 1650 in the Hungarian town of Tótfal. His calvinistic church had sent him to the Netherlands to oversee the printing of a Hungarian language bible. He studied printing and punch cutting and earned special recognition for his Armenian and Hebrew types. Upon his return to Hungary, an emergency situation forced him to sell several of his matrice sets to the Ehrhardt Typefoundry in Leipzig. In Hungary he printed from his own typefaces, but religious tensions arose between him and one of his church elders. He died at an early age in 1702. The significant characteristics of the “Dutch Antiqua” by Kis are the larger body size, relatively small lower case letters and strong upper case letters, which show clearly defined contrasts in the stroke widths. The “Kis Antiqua” is less elegant than the Garamond, rather somewhat austere in a calvinistic way, but its expression is unique and full of tension. The upper and lower case serifs are only slightly concave, and the upper case O as well as the lower case o have, for the first time, a vertical axis. In the replica, sensitively and respectfully (responsibly) drawn by Hildegard Korger, these characteristics of this pleasantly readable and beautiful face have been well met. For Typoart it was clear that this typeface has to appear under its only true name “Kis Antiqua.” It will be used primarily in book design. Elsner+Flake added two headline weights, which are available as a separate font family Kis Antiqua Now TH Pro Designer: Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis, 1686 Hildegard Korger, 1986-1988 Erhard Kaiser, 2008

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

Admiral was inspired by and extrapolated from the Art Nouveau lettering incised into the facade of a local hostelry. This gave us some inspiration for the capitals 'A', 'B', 'C', 'E', 'H', 'I', 'L', 'O', 'S', 'T' and 'U'; we then had great fun extrapolating the rest! The source of the name Admiral can be spotted if you look at characters such as 'A', 'H' and 'N'. Admiral's distinctive charm and humour lends it to projects with a 1900s Art Nouveau theme, be they book covers, posters, signage, invitations, cards, or anything else you enjoy!

A 1930s hand-lettered poster for the play "The Cradle Will Rock", put on by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Theater Project is the source material for Talent Show JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions. Originally, the "R" and "L" had fish hook bends, but those two letters were revised to be more traditional in structure. The obvious Art Deco influence, along with what sign painters refer to as "stovepipe lettering" (straight lines with curved [bent] corners) is a simple, clean approach to retro-influenced titling.

ITC Musclehead is the work of type designer Timothy Donaldson, a robust, densely packed handwriting typeface. It almost looks like brushwork but was in fact made with a ruling pen which Donaldson had bought from a company in Salem, Massachusetts. He says, The world's gone ruling-pen mad at the moment [late 1990s] and I was beginning to tire of all the skinny splashiness of the letters that most people were making with them. I wanted to do something heavy and robust with the tool, so that's what I did.""

Congress from Adrian Williams was shown for the first time at the Association Typographique International Congress, which proved to be so popular in 1980 at Kiel; designed to present a style equally appealling in European languages. Many characters are more condensed than is usual, while others have had certain elements exagerated, bringing notice to new elements of certain letters. The concept being to bring an equality of importance to the whole, producing a collection of International characters working together in harmony on the page -- a common aim that Europeans wish of any Congress.

QuickType is a typeface I designed for demonstration purposes. I used it to illustrate my first book about type design. It has crooked slab serifs and looks very much like a typewriter font. But in order to make things clear I had to overdo some curves and so QuickType turned out a very distinct typewriter typeface. Since those days I worked on the shapes from time to time, so it got better and I extended it to include several neccessary cuts. Now it is a full fledged very usable font. Yours very quick Gert Wiescher.

When my Taiji teacher gave all of his students a handwritten card with their name on I noticed that he had an unusual and beautiful handwriting. I persuaded him to write out each of the standard glyphs for me in return for me doing some repairs to his trousers! Earth Encounters Family is the result. The regular font and the light version include OpenType coding to offer the option of different versions of the same letter in words, giving the effect of real handwriting. Earth Encounters also comes with a Shadow style.

ITC Mudville was Christopher Wolff's entry in the 1998 U&lc Type Design Competition, for which he won an Honorable Mention (Display). Mudville evolved from variations on hand-lettering that Wolff had done on a variety of projects over the years. The underlying shapes of the letters are formal roman letterforms, but the actual strokes retain the look of letters sketched casually on a layout. Mudville straddles the line between inline and outline type designs. It recalls some of the styles of popular lettering used in display advertising in the '20s.

If you've had too much coffee but not enough of Too Much Coffee Man you can now indulge in an excess of characters created by the hand of Too Much Coffee Man's creator, Mister Shannon Wheeler. Don't worry, in our efforts to ensure clean and confident lettering samples, we kept Shannon on decaf until he was done. Dip this font in your system folder and your hard drive will get a caffeine and sugar rush guaranteed to increase its memory partition and bring the images on your monitor into sharper focus.

Vingo is an understated, elegant, sans serif face. This font is among the first in a series of alphabets I am creating that are dignified and sophisticated. I wish these fonts had been available when I was designing wine labels. These fonts are rooted in "old world" tradition, but are more utilitarian. Some of the funky aspects are downplayed, some are enhanced and updated. Any job that requires understated sophistication is perfect for this face. The name comes from the French for wine, "Vin", and "Go" from gothic-wine gothic or Vingo.

SoftMaker’s Tioga Script Pro typeface was designed in 1956, but feels as fresh as if it had been created yesterday. An informal script typeface that comes in three different weights. Tioga Script Pro contains OpenType layout tables for sophisticated typography. It also comes with a huge character set that covers not only Western European languages, but also includes Central European, Baltic, Croatian, Slovene, Romanian, and Turkish characters. Case-sensitive punctuation signs for all-caps titles are included as well as many fractions, an extensive set of ligatures, and separate sets of tabular and proportional digits.

These letters were developed to decorate the font Bowling and then were also used in the fonts Coffeemug and Teapot. For many years the InsideLetters family had only one family member, InsideLetters. An upgrade in early 2019 added two more family members, InsideLettersHalloween and InsideLettersXmas. The first puts the letters from InsideLetters on pumpkins and the second puts them on Christmas tree ornaments. In 2022 and oblique stye was added to the family. Inside letters is caps-only. It is a casual and playful handwritten sans-serif font.

The inspiration for this font (as well as the name!) comes from a London cafe I visited years ago. I was fascinated with the handwritten menu - irregular and awkward, yet refreshingly charming. I did my best to recall that particular look by adding 4 slightly different versions of each lowercase letter. The name of the font comes from the speed of the waiter...or the lack of it! But luckily he took his time, otherwise I wouldn't have had the time to really look at the handwritten menu! :)

AggressIan is the release of the first font I ever drew. It was done by hand with triangle and parallel rule back in the mid-1980s. I originally called it Aggressor, but I never liked it. My local type designer friend, Ian Roberts, really likes this type of drawing and told me I had to release it. So I named it after him. The small caps should work well if you need a bolder version. It has oldstyle and lining figures, plus the small cap figures. I hope you like it.

Penang is a modern take on an old piece of Art Deco signage I had discovered in Penang Malaysia. The font is available in four styles: Regular, Bold and Italics of both. It looks great as All Caps but works equally well in standard copy. The font is loaded with plenty of extras and glyphs (256 but who is counting). I have various cuts of certain letters available as alternates to enhance whatever design you’re working on. I’m really happy with how this font finished, so I hope you enjoy using it.

During the years of physically doing camera-ready paste-up work before the advent of the digital age, clip art books dominated the way stock art was added to a print project. Clip art books were eventually replaced by clip art CDs, DVDs and online download sites, just as the books themselves had replaced the stock photo engravings of the letterpress era. With the kind permission of Graphic Products Corporation, Jeff Levine Fonts offers up a sampling of images found within the pages of Graphic Source clip art books; aptly entitled Classic Clips JNL.

Basile is the conclusion of a process that began with the learning of italic handwriting in a roballos-Naab studio course. In this workshop I developed a variation of chancery handwriting which had a more pronounced wider than its historical model. While making the digitalization, the forms were modified to obtain a similar spirit to the one in the handwriting, but thinking about the text in small sizes. Also incorporating three sets of forms enlarged the family: italic, swash and extra swash. And the addition of initials and terminals sets.

The hand lettered sans serif title on the1931 sheet music for “(Potatoes are Cheaper-Tomatoes are Cheaper) Now’s the Time to Fall in Love” presented another opportunity to create a typeface from the wealth of unusual alphabets found on the covers of vintage and antique song sheets. However, it seems that even as late as the 1930s, song writers had the urge to pen long-worded titles for their musical compositions. This thirteen word verbal excursion became the model for Casual Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1963 movie poster for an Italian documentary called “Sexy Nudo” had its title lettering in a free form spur serif design reminiscent of cut paper. This inspired Winkle Picker JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Despite the subject matter of the film documentary, the lettering on the poster is fun and playful, which meant the digital font deserved a fun name as well. It was named for a shoes and boots with sharp and long pointed toes which first gained popularity in the 1950s.

The 1930 Geneva Motor Show (Salon International De l'Automobile Et Du Cycle) showcased a lot of new cars, but one item in particular took my interest: the amazing art deco poster announcing the show. Lokomotiv font was based on this poster. It is a very deco-ish font, futuristic, angular, with bold squares, rounds and triangles. As I had to work with just a handful of glyphs, and needed to fill an entire font, I made up the missing ones myself. Lokomotiv, by the way, is German for Locomotive.