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.

Arapix is a 12 pixel high multilingual Latin-Arabic pixel font with incredible capabilities. The Arapix is an almost traditional Naskh. It is elegant and easy to read even in very small sizes. It includes almost every feature you would expect from a high range Naskh font. Its humanistic look and feel fit perfectly to its Latin counterpart. Arapix was originally designed for a web project that didn't see the light a few years back. It started with the idea of fitting both Latin and Arabic into a 12 pixel vertical grid. The latin glyphs fit properly within the vertical limits, but when it came to the arabic glyphs, it proved to be more challenging. Arabic letters with lower diacritic dots like the (Yeh-fina) or letters with accents above like the (Alef-Hamza-above) need much more space than any Latin letter. Add to this the fact that accents needs to be positioned above and below the glyphs. It is technically impossible to fit a (Yeh-fina-kasratan) or a (Alef-Hamza-above-shadda-damma) into 12 pixels. Initially the accents were dropped and not included in the design. Although it seemed impossible at the start, Sylvain found a solution in the end, including as many contextual alternates and contextual kerning as needed to avoid every collision between letters and diacritics, letters and accents, and diacritics and accents. The contextual kerning was added to achieve an even letter and word spacing in longer text. Arapix is amazingly legible in small size on screen and in print. On the other hand, it also works perfectly as display titling font due to its unique and contemporary pixel approach. It can be used for screens with very low resolution as well as for high resolution screens and prints. The new Arapix comes with various new features and new glyphs including Persian and Urdu letters, stylistic set, old style figures, contextual kerning, contextual alternates and a few icons too. Enjoy the new Arapix and have fun with it.

Hi there, thanks for looking at my first typeface. It began as one of my original sketches back in 2019 as a freelance graphic designer trying to create unique letterforms that I could use for posters or websites with other possible use cases in mind for commercial use. The sketches were then passed on to and worked on with Vladimir Tsagolov who has more experience in creating professional typefaces, the experience for me was invaluable, and I have many more typefaces I'm now working on. Shiny Ink Display is a collection of hand drawn fonts based on the flow of reflective viscous ink with 7 styles, some styles can be interchangeable and used on top of each other. For example, Shiny Ink Display Plain, can be used with Shiny Ink Display Plain Lined to create shadows underneath it, at angles not available with the Shadow styles you'll see in the font collection. Shiny Ink Display has various use cases, maybe even infinite, but more specifically for posters or websites with large text, though it bodes quite well at smaller sizes, and is visually appealing to its viewers as long as it's at a legible font size. When it comes to font pairing, Shiny Ink Display works especially well with Monospace and sans-serif fonts. You can check the poster examples on this page to help you imagine what you could do with the font styles. I also had in mind manufactured products, but I could leave that to you to create your ideas with the available font styles. In regards to languages or typing on a keyboard, most of the English/European latin or cyrillic language keys are supported, so you'll have lots of glyph characters to play with for a number of ideas you may have. All the best with your projects using my fonts, if there are any issues, don't hesitate to contact me for support: lloyddaviddesigns.co.uk - Lloyd David

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.

Geometric, stylish, and not quite a stencil face: Glance Sans is the urban alter ego of Glance Slab—a strong-willed sans-serif with no frills but a few unique character traits. Glance Sans follows the design principle of nonjoining parts that made Glance Slab successful. Some strokes may not connect to their stems, creating visible gaps and thus, a dynamic impression of balance and movement. However, Glance Sans has a calmer appearance due to the lack of detached serifs. If Glance Slab’s home territory are large, crowded stadiums and massive sports events, Glance Sans prefers streetball courts, well-used skate parks, and underground clubs. It also adapts to urban work environments from finance to high-tech. Whenever a more toned-down look is called for while retaining the elegance of an athlete, Glance Sans is ready to roll. In the city environment, versatility is key. That’s why Glance Sans sports 7 weights as well as a complete set of italics. These are not just sloped romans but individually drawn letterforms, subtly referencing classic italic construction for more effective emphasis. Among the 600+ glyphs of Glance Sans, you’ll find goodies such as six sets of figures, circled numbers, circled arrows, and all kinds of currency symbols in two stylistic versions. Glance Sans is a great tool for industrial and high-tech branding, for wayfinding systems in contemporary or modernist architecture, for corporate identities in arts, crafts, medicine, culture, and education, and for all kinds of sports-themed design. Both members of the Glance superfamily are easily and effectively combinable; both are able to stand on their own feet. With its powerful italics, you might opt for Glance Sans as your text typeface and use Glance Slab for headlines. Or you set large, clean, display-sized lines in Glance Sans and spice them up with a bit of sportive Glance Slab. It’s up to you to decide how to bring out the best in both of them.

Geometric/Technical style logotypes have been developed for car chrome labels since the early 1980’s, but automobile companies don't monopolize the style by any means. During the 80’s and 90’s, a lot of these logos leaned towards the geometric sans styles and the swiss styling of fonts like Handel Gothic, while playing with varying degrees of squared rounds and varying expanded widths per logotype. Mercurial has this flavor, but it wasn’t derived from logotypes. Instead, it began as a digitization of a film typeface from LetterGraphics in the early 70's known as "Sam". It visual ties to this genre of automotive logotypes and fonts like Handel Gothic lend a familiarity to it, yet it has an identity all its own. As with so many automotive logotypes, this singular style film typeface, lacked an expansive family which shows off all potential the logotypes have and what they "could" be and do. And that's where we come in. What originally began as this family’s Regular Width - Bold Style has been expanded into a collection of 3 Width Families, each containing 5 Weights. Here’s what’s included with the Mercurial Complete bundle: 396 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the final poster graphics for a preview of the characters included) 3 widths in the collection: Narrow, Regular, & Wide 5 weights in each width family: Light, Book, Regular, Medium & Bold. Here’s why the Mercurial Family is for you: - You’re in need of stylish sans font family with a range of widths and weights. - You’re love those 80’s automotive logos, but want more range of use. - You’re looking for an alternative to Handel Gothic. - You’re looking for a clean techno typeface for your rave poster designs. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal.

“Kindah” is a Yemeni ancient tribe with evidence of its existence going back to the second century B.C.E. The kings of Kindah exercised an influence over a number of associated tribes more by personal prestige than by coercive settled authority. The Kindites were polytheistic until the 6th century CE, with evidence of rituals dedicated to the gods Athtar and Kahil found in their ancient capital in south-central Arabia. It is not clear whether they converted to Judaism or remained pagan, but there is a strong archaeological evidence that they were among the tribes in Dhu Nuwas' forces during the Jewish king’s attempt to suppress Christianity in Yemen. They converted to Islam in the mid-7th century CE and played a crucial role during the Muslims' conquests of their surroundings. Among the most famous figures from Kindah known as Kindites are Imru' al-Qays (526-565?), al-Ash'ath ibn Qays (599-661), Hujr ibn 'Adi al-Kindi (?-660), al-Miqdad Ibn Aswad al-Kindi (589-653), and Abu Yusuf Yaíqub ibn Ishaq as-Sabbah al-Kindi (805-873) known as the Philosopher of the Arabs. "Kindah" font is a modern Kufic font comes in three weights (i.e., bold, regular, and thin) which is mainly designed to be used as a display Arabic font. The main feature of this typeface is the mixture of curves and rectangular shapes used in the designed Arabic characters. Kindah font was inspired by the design of the Yemeni modern windows of houses in which only top part of the arc is used for building such windows which reflects the originality of the architecture preserved in this part of the world. "Kindah" font is extremely outstanding when used in printed materials with big sizes especially for headline, titles, signs, and names of brands. Hence, it is suitable for books' covers, advertisement light boards, and titles in magazines and newspapers. It has also a Latin character set and it also supports several Arabic character sets which makes it proper for composing alphabetical and numerical words in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian.