The Journal Sans typeface was developed in the Type Design Department of SPA of Printing Machinery in Moscow in 1940–1956 by the group of designers under Anatoly Schukin. It was based on Erbar Grotesk by Jacob Erbar and Metro Sans by William A. Dwiggins, the geometric sans-serifs of the 1920s with the pronounced industrial spirit. Journal Sans, Rublenaya (Sans-Serif), and Textbook typefaces were the main Soviet sans-serifs. So no wonder that it was digitized quite early, in the first half of 1990s. Until recently, Journal Sans consisted of three faces and retained all the problems of early digitization, such as inaccurate curves or side-bearings copied straight from metal-type version. The years of 2013 and 2014 made «irregular» geometric sans-serifs trendy, and that fact affected Journal Sans. In the old version curves were corrected and the character set was expanded by Olexa Volochay. In the new release, besides minor improvements, a substantial work has been carried out to make the old typeface work better in digital typography and contemporary design practice. Maria Selezeneva significantly worked over the design of some glyphs, expanded the character set, added some alternatives, completely changed the side-bearings and kerning. Also, the Journal Sans New has several new faces, such as true italic (the older font had slanted version for the italic), an Inline face based on the Bold, and the Display face with proportions close to the original Erbar Grotesk. The new version of Journal Sans, while keeping all peculiarities and the industrial spirit of 1920s-1950s, is indeed fully adapted to the modern digital reality. It can be useful either for bringing historical spirit into design or for modern and trendy typography, both in print and on screen. Designed by Maria Selezeneva with the participation of Alexandra Korolkova. Released by ParaType in 2014.

The Ahoura font family, designed by Naghi Naghashian, was developed considering specific research and analysis on Arabic characters and definition of their structure. The Ahoura innovation is a contribution to modernisation of Arabic typography; gives the Arabic font letters real typographic arrangement and provides for more typographic flexibility. This step was necessary after more than two hundred years of relative stagnation in Arabic font design. Ahoura supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. The Ahoura Font family is available in three weights; Light, Regular and Bold. Each has two different styles-- normal and italic. Ahoura is the first real italic Arabic typeface known until now and its intuitive design arrangement fulfils the following needs: - It is precisely crafted for use in electronic media and it fulfils the demands of electronic communication. Ahoura is not based on any pre-digital typefaces and it is not a revival. Rather, its forms were created with today’s ever-changing technology in mind. - Ahoura is suitable for multiple applications, and gives the widest potential for acceptability. - It is extremely legible not only in its small sizes, but also when the type is filtered or skewed, e.g., in Photoshop or Illustrator. Ahoura's simplified forms may be artificially obliqued with In Design or Illustrator, without any degradation of its quality for the effected text. - Ahoura is an eye-catching and classy typographic image that developed for multiple languages and writing conventions. - Ahoura uses the very highest degree of geometric clarity along with the necessary amount of calligraphic references. The Ahoura typeface is of a high vibration that is finely balance between calligraphic tradition and the contemporary sans serif aesthetic commonly seen in Latin typography.

Compatil is the first comprehensive type system which enables all typographical elements to be used to full effect in order to reproduce the message conveyed by text information. Four different type styles with a total of 16 weights including italics have been merged into a unique typographical network. There are now no limits to the font user's creativity. The system is a product of technical innovation and constitutes a new design approach which meets the highest aesthetic standards. For almost two years, a team of experts from Linotype has been working with initiator Professor Olaf Leu under the direction of Silja Bilz, Erik Faulhaber and Reinhard Haus to create the Compatil type system. Despite the Internet and TV, it is essential today to be able to absorb information quickly by being able to read it with ease. A fact that is becoming increasingly important both on-screen and on paper. It is the role of the font to increase legibility and to ensure typographically perfect results for text design work. The new Compatil type system meets all these needs. The Compatil is a part of the Platinum Collection. The following four different styles are available: Compatil Exquisit, Compatil Fact, Compatil Letter and Compatil Text. Compatil is available in various font formats: 16 separate OT Pro fonts including the small caps and Adobe Central European character set for OpenType-supporting applications like Adobe InDesign, or as 32 separate OpenType Com fonts for office communication, with the following special features: 1. Optimized display capabilities for computer screens eXcellent Screen Fonts (XSF-quality). 2. An extended, international character set, which supports 48 different languages for Microsoft Office applications like MS Word or as 64 PostScript fonts, which can be used in non-OpenType-supporting applications like Quark XPress.

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mariachiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique is an evolution of the original design by Zetafonts for Lovelace, that challenges its romantic curves with the glitchy and fluid aesthetic of trans-modern neo-brutalist typography. The seductive "evil serif" look of the Pheimester-like Oldstyle letter shapes is made edgier by the quirky connections and unexpected calligraphic twirls that marry digital distortions to traditional penmanship. Sensuous but sharp, Erotique speaks the language of teasing, and unrequited love, over-the-top and restrained like a show of Japanese Kinbaku, and beautifully heartbreaking like a friendzone valentine. Designed for display use, this high-contrast serif typeface is ready to take center stage in projects where a subtle elegance and an edgy, aggressive touch are required. For branding use it is paired by a Erotique Ornaments, a set of interlocking patterns based on the font letter-shapes, allowing for striking packaging, digital and ambient design. For editorial use it can add a sharp sensuality to logos and titles thanks to an impressive array of alternate glyphs, subtle ligatures and a set of whiplike fleurons, collected in the Erotique Flourishes pack. The typeface has been developed in the regular, medium and bold weight plus a monoline version, all of which have been paired with an Alternate version to give immediate access the more exotic alternate letterforms. With a character set of over five hundred glyphs, all the the weights of Erotique cover almost 200 languages using extended latin, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Swash and Case Sensitive Forms. If you are a typeface lover, be warned: Erotique could be your fatal attraction!

"PGF Caprina Pro" is an audacious and rough geometric sans-serif font inspired by the wild and untamed personality of mountain goats (the word "caprina"‘ in Spanish is related to or resembling ‘goats’)—amazing animals which can skilfully climb up slopes and withstand very cold temperatures. Was originally developed under the Latinotype team supervision and is now upgraded to this Pro version that comes in 20 font styles, with 739 glyphs each, supports now more than 200 Latin-based languages and includes a wider OpenType features range like: Stylistic Alternates ‘set 01’ for b, d, g, p, q, i, j, t, y, &, I, G, M Stylistic Alternates ‘set 02’ for d, g, j 4 Stylistic Alternate from ‘set 01’ to ‘set 04’ for Enclosed Numbers (circles and squares) Stylistic Alternate ‘set 05’ for curved 3 and ‘Zero with dot inside’ Contextual alternates automatically turns ‘zero’ into a ‘slashed zero’ in alphanumeric contexts Contextual alternates automatically turns “Il” into a serif for improve its legibility Case Sensitive when "All Caps" is activated for ß, ¡, ¿, () [] {}, ‹› «», •(bullet), *(asterisk), -(hyphen) Standard Ligatures for fi, fj, fl Discretionary Ligatures for tt, tr, www, LL, TT Lining Numbers Old Style Numbers Tabular Lining Tabular Old Style Numbers Slashed zero on every number figures Numerators and Denominators from 0 to 9 for any Fraction expression Superiors and Inferiors from 0 to 9 for any scientific notation Ordinal forms for ‘a’ and ‘o’ Localized language customization for German, Dutch, Polish, Catalan, Romanian, Moldavian, Turkish, etc. Every OpenType option is also accessible via Character Map allowing users and designers to choose an alternate design for a particular character. “PGF Caprina Pro” is well-suited for high-impact action publishing and advertising as well related with adrenalynic and extreme sport design stuff.

Compatil is the first comprehensive type system which enables all typographical elements to be used to full effect in order to reproduce the message conveyed by text information. Four different type styles with a total of 16 weights including italics have been merged into a unique typographical network. There are now no limits to the font user's creativity. The system is a product of technical innovation and constitutes a new design approach which meets the highest aesthetic standards. For almost two years, a team of experts from Linotype has been working with initiator Professor Olaf Leu under the direction of Silja Bilz, Erik Faulhaber and Reinhard Haus to create the Compatil type system. Despite the Internet and TV, it is essential today to be able to absorb information quickly by being able to read it with ease. A fact that is becoming increasingly important both on-screen and on paper. It is the role of the font to increase legibility and to ensure typographically perfect results for text design work. The new Compatil type system meets all these needs. The Compatil is a part of the Platinum Collection. The following four different styles are available: Compatil Exquisit, Compatil Fact, Compatil Letter and Compatil Text. Compatil is available in various font formats: 16 separate OT Pro fonts including the small caps and Adobe Central European character set for OpenType-supporting applications like Adobe InDesign, or as 32 separate OpenType Com fonts for office communication, with the following special features: 1. Optimized display capabilities for computer screens eXcellent Screen Fonts (XSF-quality). 2. An extended, international character set, which supports 48 different languages for Microsoft Office applications like MS Word or as 64 PostScript fonts, which can be used in non-OpenType-supporting applications like Quark XPress.

Some 40 km north of Helsinki, surrounded by meadows and a serene Finnish lake, lies Ainola, the former home and now museum of composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). I know the place quite well, since it is only a stone’s throw away from the art school where I began my graphic design studies. We sometimes went there after classes—a beautiful walk, especially in spring, when the days were getting longer, the snow melting in the sun and the ice cracking on the lake. The composer often professed his love for this landscape and found constant inspiration in its moods, sounds and scents during different seasons. For many people, Sibelius and his music, most notably his famous symphonic poem Finlandia, are a symbol of Finland. I decided to name the typeface family I’m presenting here FinlandiaScript, because it owes its influence to both Sibelius’ manuscripts and the Finnish landscape around Ainola. The shape of letters, their poise and the rhythm they create resemble Sibelius’ handwriting without copying it. The letters form gently flowing lines of text which is legible without giving up individuality. The font family comes in three styles: FinlandiaScript, FinlandiaScript Bold and FinlandiaScript Frost. Together they are perfect for magazines, websites and brands aiming to create a personal and sincere image. While the fine details of FinlandiaScript Frost are best suitable for display sizes, FinlandiaScript and FinlandiaScript Bold work well in both headlines and texts of smaller sizes. Hundreds of ligatures give them an especially flexible appearance. The FinlandiaScript family contains Western, Central European and Extended Cyrillic character sets and supports almost 100 languages. It is best suited for Opentype savvy programs with the “standard ligatures” and “contextual alternates” features turned on.

Throughout time, history’s architects have incorporated some of the finest illustrations of type into their great works--cuneiform on Mesopotamian ziggurats; Greek etched into the temples of the gods; inscriptions marking the monuments of mighty Rome. From these Roman inscriptions specifically, we take our capital letters of today; and while we've lost the need for serifs over time, our current characters maintain the classical foundations, even after being distilled to their simplistic forms. Here’s where we have the basis for Le Havre Titling. This updated face is a carefully optimized version of Le Havre that uses purely capital lettering. Originally inspired by the golden period of the passenger ship and the French port that bid a rich bon voyage to so many famed, luxurious ocean liners of the Roaring Twenties and Thirties, the typeface includes an exciting array of ligatures that brings it into the present day and gives designers a tremendous amount of versatility in their work. With its seven weights, Titling looks equally at home on the side of a building as it does in a finely crafted invitation. With over five hundred glyphs, Le Havre Titling offers a multiplicity of options for your projects. Combine ligatures, play around with two sets of art deco forms, use original caps, and more; every one of these is obtainable with the OpenType functionality. The new design also shares five weights with the original Le Havre, allowing you to maximize your potential through its interchangeability. Titling’s Thin weights are delicate but not too fragile, and its geometric forms give each individual composition you create an exquisite and beautiful sense of emotion. Without a doubt, this fresh, fashionable take on the classical forms offers your reader refined, yet unanticipated approach as he or she travels through your text.

Dedicated to the XXII summer Olympic Games. I was inspired by the icons of these games when creating font Olymp80. This is an excerpt from the official report of the Moscow Olympics: "Sports pictographs, as we know, are pictographic drawings symbolising sports. They serve as points of reference and help overcome language barrier. Over the past few years, they have been integrated into the decoration of Olympic cities, and have been depicted in Olympic posters, commemorative medals, postage stamps, tickets, souvenirs, etc. On the OCOG-80’s request, graduates from several art colleges took up the design of the pictographs of the insignia as the theme of their dissertations. With the help of the research institute of industrial aesthetics, the Organising Committee chose the work submitted by Nikolai Belkov, Mukhina Art School graduate from Leningrad. The State Committee for Inventions and Discoveries under the USSR Council of Ministers recognised the new design as a production pattern. Though highly stylised, the new signs are easily comprehensible. They are smoother in outline because they are constructed at an angle of 30-60 (previously the angle was 45-90). Another merit of the new system is that the designs can be adapted for use in four representations: direct (solid, black against a white background), reverse (solid, white against a black background), contour (black contour against a white background), and reverse-contour (white contour against a black background), and permit several colour and shade and size variations." All text and pictures you may see on 1980 Moscow, Volume 2, Part 2, Page 420. Monospaced font for names, logotypes, titles, headers, topics etc. Font includes only uppercase letters with two alternative designs for each letter.

Welcome to the world of Stampoo, where creativity meets typography. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill typeface—this is a joyful, wild, and curvaceous font that is guaranteed to make your words pop. When you use Stampoo, your message will be transformed from a mundane statement to a laid-back expression of kindness. It’s like giving your words a warm hug, but without the awkwardness of physical contact. The rubber stamp letterforms are as natural as the grass under your feet, and the bespoke pairs will make your text flow like a mountain stream. But Stampoo isn’t just a pretty face. Oh no! This font is a true workhorse, designed to make your life easier. With OpenType ligatures, those tricky letter combinations are replaced by bespoke pairs, making your text look more natural and realistic. It’s like having a personal typographer at your fingertips, without the exorbitant hourly rate. So why settle for boring, run-of-the-mill typography when you can have the natural, creative, and joyful letterforms of Stampoo? Add a touch of whimsy to your next project, and let Stampoo do the heavy lifting. Your audience will thank you for it. Some Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aymara, Basque, Bemba, Bikol, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Genoese, German, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hiligaynon, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa, Malay, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romansh, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tetum, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Lapis was Jim Rimmer's venture into a territory he'd earlier explored with his Lancelot and Fellowship faces. This time he stayed much longer, dug pretty deep, and had plenty of fun in there. The end result is the kind of mosaic of influences only a guy like Jim could consider, gather, manage and apply in a way that ultimately makes sense and works as a type family. On the surface Lapis seems like something that can be billed as what Jim would have called an "advertising text face". But under the hood, it's a whole other story. On top of the calligraphic, nib-driven base Jim usually employed in his faces, Lapis shows plenty of typographic traits from a variety of genres, from Egyptian to Latin, from blackletter angularity to Dutch-like curvature, with an overall tension even reminiscent of wood type. There are some Goudy-informed shapes that somehow fit comfortably within all this. Then it's all strung together with a mix of wedged, tapered and leaning serifs, placed with precision to reveal expert spontaneity and a great command of guiding the forms through counterspace. In the fall of 2013, the Lapis fonts were scrutinized and remastered into versatile performers for sizes large and small. The three weights and their italic counterparts have been refined and expanded across the board to include small caps, alternates, ligatures, ordinals, case-sensitive forms, six kinds of figures, automatic fractions, and a character set that covers an extended range of Latin languages. Each of the Lapis Pro fonts contains over 760 glyphs. For more details on the fonts' features, text and display specimens and print tests, consult the Lapis Pro PDF availabe in the Gallery section of this page. 20% of Lapis Pro's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Reminiscent of circuitry and wrought iron, Anachrony constructs the forms of an Old English Blackletter with the strokes of a Modern Geometric Sans, and lands in the vicinity of Art Deco. For such an unusual chimera, the Anachrony family is legible and versatile. Its glyphs cover pan-European Latin, Greek, and a wealth of symbols including arrows, zodiac, planets, chess, suits, and circled numbers. It is also packed with Opentype features: Small Capitals: Of similar proportions to the default numerals, tall enough to be a suitable choice in place of regular capitals. All Caps Forms: In addition to the four usual types of numerals, there are numerals and currency symbols that match the capitals. Swash: A leading curly swash on capitals, and fancy looped ascenders in the lowercase that are handled by over a hundred standard ligatures where they would collide. Style Set 01: Romanized forms. Especially recommended for all caps. Plainer A/M/T/V/W/Y, J/Q reined in to the baseline, and alternate g. Style Set 02: Masthead forms. Old-fashioned capitals with descenders and that lower left dealy. Also f/x/z/ß in a more traditional fraktur mode. Style Set 03: Mild embellishments. Tall bifurcated ascenders and descenders. Style Set 04: Extravagant swash descenders. Style Set 05: Final swashes for the end of a word. Style Set 06: Converts capital letters into the corresponding connected Roman numerals. Seemed like it could be useful sometime. Easy swooshes: Standard ligatures allow you to type two to seven commas in a row to append an assortment of sweeping or ending swashes. Catchwords: In Anachrony Royale, turn on Discretionary Ligatures for a variety of decorative articles and prepositions.

This is Bolyar Sans font family. For us it is a dream-come-true. It took more than 1 year hard work to transform the existing Bolyar Pro from Serif to Sans Serif version. The result really surprised even us from The Fontmaker and we decided to develop it in 9 instead of 7 weights. So at the end we created 7 different styles of Bolyar sans each consisting from 9 precise weights. Bolyar Sans is not just another font family in our portfolio - it is the essence from all our efforts thru the past 5 years to create a powerful type tool that could easily meet very diverse and complex demands of modern design. Furthermore, like all its predecessors, Bolyar Sans is a type concept created by Designers for Designers. If you are in wine and spirits industry, packaging design, or you just love to work with strong headlines that effortlessly could turn into brand logos, then you should definitely try our Bolyar Sans. It is designed for this. Of course there are plenty of different features like multilingual support, ligatures, alternates, we even added adaptive over- and underlining to make it even more complex in its use. Bolyar Sans pairs perfectly with other members of Bolyar Family - Pro , Ornate and Typecraft . So as you see Bolyar is developed as a type platform with own character and style. By using it you could be vintage, classic, modern, soft, even bold, rough and ornate. It is a visual bridge between different typographic periods united under Bolyar name. With our Sans version we aim to be contemporary and to provide powerful type tool to those designers who often love to swim between past and modernity.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

ITC Johnston is the result of the combined talents of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, based on the work of Edward Johnston. In developing ITC Johnston, says London type designer Dave Farey, he did “lots of research on not only the face but the man.” Edward Johnston was something of an eccentric, “famous for sitting in a deck chair and carrying toast in his pockets.” (The deck chair was his preferred furniture in his own living room; the toast was so that he’d always have sustenance near at hand.) Johnston was also almost single-handedly responsible, early in this century, for the revival in Britain of the Renaissance calligraphic tradition of the chancery italic. His book Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (with its peculiar extraneous comma in the title) is a classic on its subject, and his influence on his contemporaries was tremendous. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for the alphabet that he designed in 1916 for the London Underground Railway (now London Transport), which was based on his original “block letter” model. Johnston’s letters were constructed very carefully, based on his study of historical writing techniques at the British Museum. His capital letters took their form from the best classical Roman inscriptions. “He had serious rules for his sans serif style,” says Farey, “particularly the height-to-weight ratio of 1:7 for the construction of line weight, and therefore horizontals and verticals were to be the same thickness. Johnston’s O’s and C’s and G’s and even his S’s were constructions of perfect circles. This was a bit of a problem as far as text sizes were concerned, or in reality sizes smaller than half an inch. It also precluded any other weight but medium ‘ any weight lighter or heavier than his 1:7 relationship.” Johnston was famously slow at any project he undertook, says Farey. “He did eventually, under protest, create a bolder weight, in capitals only ‘ which took twenty years to complete.” Farey and his colleague Richard Dawson have based ITC Johnston on Edward Johnston’s original block letters, expanding them into a three-weight type family. Johnston himself never called his Underground lettering a typeface, according to Farey. It was an alphabet meant for signage and other display purposes, designed to be legible at a glance rather than readable in passages of text. Farey and Dawson’s adaptation retains the sparkling starkness of Johnston’s letters while combining comfortably into text. Johnston’s block letter bears an obvious resemblance to Gill Sans, the highly successful type family developed by Monotype in the 1920s. The young Eric Gill had studied under Johnston at the London College of Printing, worked on the Underground project with him, and followed many of the same principles in developing his own sans serif typeface. The Johnston letters gave a characteristic look to London’s transport system after the First World War, but it was Gill Sans that became the emblematic letter form of British graphic design for decades. (Johnston’s sans serif continued in use in the Underground until the early ‘80s, when a revised and modernized version, with a tighter fit and a larger x-height, was designed by the London design firm Banks and Miles.) Farey and Dawson, working from their studio in London’s Clerkenwell, wanted to create a type family that was neither a museum piece nor a bastardization, and that would “provide an alternative of the same school” to the omnipresent Gill Sans. “These alphabets,” says Farey, referring to the Johnston letters, “have never been developed as contemporary styles.” He and Dawson not only devised three weights of ITC Johnston but gave it a full set of small capitals in each weight ‘ something that neither the original Johnston face nor the Gill faces have ‘ as well as old-style figures and several alternate characters.