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Sweet Square

Sweet Square

by Sweet
Individual Styles from $39.00 USD
Complete family of 8 fonts: $179.00 USD
Sweet Square Font Poster 1
Sweet Square Font Family was designed by Mark van Bronkhorst and published by Sweet. Sweet Square contains 24 styles and family package options.

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Sweet Square Small Caps Package 1

 8 fonts

Best Value!

Per Style:

$22.37 USD

Pack of 8 styles:

$179.00 USD

Buying Choices

Sweet Square Package 1

 8 fonts

Per Style:

$22.37 USD

Pack of 8 styles:

$179.00 USD

Buying Choices
Add to Album
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Licensing Options

About Sweet Square Font Family

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “Standard” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

Designers: Mark van Bronkhorst

Publisher: Sweet

Foundry: Sweet

Design Owner: Sweet

MyFonts debut: Sep 16, 2011

Sweet Square

About Sweet

Sweet Fonts Collection is a growing range of engraving lettering styles from the 20th Century. With the advent of the engraving machine (a pantograph device) around 1900, commercial engraving moved from the use of hand-cut plates to the use of masterplates (lettering patterns). Lettering was traced from the masterplate using the engraving machine, letter by letter, onto a coated steel plate, that would then be etched in a chemical bath. The resulting plate was used to print engraved stationery with the raised print distinctive to the process. Many of these lettering styles were used for decades for commercial and social applications (letterheads, wedding invitations, etc.), but as they were merely traced alphabets, were not "fonts". Many remain unavailable in digital form. Over time, a number of the most popular styles were adapted to phototype, which sped up the process of plating for engraving, avoiding the need to trace each letter by hand with the engraving machine. Later, when type went digital, these phototype fonts were revived as digital fonts. As a result, the styles offered by engravers narrowed over time, as has the range of engraving styles revived in digital form. The Sweet Fonts Collection represents an effort to locate and revive obscure, engraved lettering styles that are at risk of fading away, as well as to re-interpret familiar designs for broader application.

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