Type Directors Club

The award-winning Conrad was created by Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi. Its design was based on the fifteenth-century type by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, two German printers active in Rome at that time. They produced a unique, slightly unbalanced yet attractive type. Kobayashi says of his typeface, "I have designed a couple of typefaces inspired from the past, but this time... Read More

Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to "renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was... Read More

A grown-up, no-nonsense sibling to Erik Spiekermann’s popular FF Meta, FF Unit irons out many of the quirks of its predecessor, dialing back the warmth to a comfortable, if a bit cool, room temperature. Set at small sizes, FF Unit’s legibility is aided by its increased contrast and simplified forms, all of which (a, g, i, j, l, U, M) have alternates. First released in 2003, FF Unit later... Read More

Xavier Dupré’s FF Absara is a work of French proportions, but its shapes take influence from the Dutch style: less polished, and more direct. Its casualness refers to humanist written forms. FF Absara’s rough cut makes it interesting at display sizes, but thanks to its generous x-height and firm serifs, FF Absara works equally well setting text. The typeface’s idiosyncratic italic creates a... Read More

German designer Hans-Jürgen Ellenberger originally developed the concept behind Elementis in 1975. Wanting to create an alternative typewriter script that was more round and natural, Elementis' design was born. True to its typewriter roots, Linotype's Elementis exhibits more character than one expects from that genre. The letters display a delightfully quirky nature, which is sure to lighten up... Read More

Pirouette is based on a logotype that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 - a shampoo container, at that! Already Tateno's original design experimented with overlapping swash italic letterforms. These experiments grew outside out their initial packaging project, taking on a life of their own. Eventually, they developed into the Pirouette typefaces,... Read More

FF Tisa designed by Mitja Miklav quickly became a new-millennium favorite of graphic designers, in print as well as on the web. Its large x-height and sturdy, well-spaced forms aid its legibility at text sizes, while its low stroke contrast and range of weights allow it to successfully function at larger sizes as well. Since the designer considered wayfinding systems a potential use for the... Read More

The full ITC Legacy collection of fonts, which includes faces that first became available in the early 1990s, is based on the Eusebius typeface by Nicolas Jenson, the French engraver, printer and pioneer typographer who created the design centuries ago in 1470. Jenson's original design featured distinctive slab serif shapes and asymmetrical foot serifs, which Arnholm carried over into his work.... Read More

The Ingeborg family was designed with the intent of producing a readable modern face. Its roots might well be historic, but its approach is very contemporary. Ingeborg’s text styles are functional and discreet. This was achieved without losing the classic characteristics of a Didone typeface, which are the vertical stress and the high contrast. The display styles on the other hand are... Read More

ITC Aspera is the product of graphic experimentation. Olivera Stojadinovic, who designed the face, recalls, "Over the last 15 years, I have made several small prints using Cyrillic characters. Often, I made my first sketches with a special pointed brush which was difficult to manipulate well, but once tamed, gave me interesting results." Stojadinovic decided to see if she could reproduce the... Read More

Argentinean designer Eduardo Manso created the Bohemia type family in 2003. Bohemia's cunning and elegant essence shows off refined letters that evoke the Transitional style typefaces like Baskerville, though most Baskerville-like designs tend not to be as curvaceous as Manso's! True to form, Bohemia shines in smaller text sizes, like 9 point and above, while still maintaining a unique... Read More

FF PicLig is a smart OpenType font with a special ability: use it to make symbols out of typed characters. While OpenType’s “discretionary ligatures” usually connect two or more letters to create a typographic ligature, designer Christina Schultz used this feature of the technology to combine several letters into an icon, a “picture ligature.” By means of automatic substitution, certain... Read More

Palatino Sans is a 21st Century sans serif typeface from the master German designer Hermann Zapf. Palatino Sans and Palatino Sans Informal was designed as part of a group of three font families: Palatino nova, Palatino Sans, and Palatino Sans Informal. Together these three families act as the fulfilment of Herman Zapf's original Palatino idea. Palatino, which was born as a metal typeface in... Read More

The Carlin Script family, inspired by the Carolingian minuscule alphabet (ca 800 A.D.), is one of the great new families available through Linotype's Library's Take Type 5 collection. Take a closer look at these beautiful characters; with them, one can create a different, more personal feeling than commonly comes from more available script and chancery fonts. Like a monk with his writing... Read More

FF Angkoon is fits into the French tradition of personal, idiosyncratic type design, exemplified by faces like François Ganeau’s Vendôme or Albert Boton’s Eras. There is also a non-Western influence mixed in: Xavier Dupré created FF Angkoon while living and working in Cambodia. Though it was not his intention to capture elements of Sanskrit or characteristics of Angkor temples, he may admit... Read More

ITC Tactile is a puzzle of subtle typographic contradictions. Capitals have traditional epigraphic proportions, but the lowercase has a uniform optical width. Light weights are stately and elegant, but bold designs are almost jolly. This paradoxical alphabet even combines two distinctively different serif designs.Designer Joe Stitzlein says, “I wanted to create a modern and dynamic serif face... Read More

The Ysobel™ typeface family is not only elegant; it is also exceptionally legible and space economical. A collaborative design effort between Robin Nicholas, as lead designer and project director, Delve Withrington and Alice Savoie of Monotype Imaging, the project had the primary design goal of creating a typeface family for setting text in newspapers and periodicals. The result, however, is... Read More

Winner: Type Design Certificate of Excellence – TDC² 2010 Competition Winner: Typeface Design – Communication Arts Typography Annual 1 Although Deliscript Upright and Deliscript Slant were initially inspired by the neon sign in front of Canter’s Delicatessen in Los Angeles, the design of these fonts soon took on a life of its own–and their own distinctive look. Like its sibling Metroscript,... Read More

The Ysobel™ typeface family is not only elegant; it is also exceptionally legible and space economical. A collaborative design effort between Robin Nicholas, as lead designer and project director, Delve Withrington and Alice Savoie of Monotype Imaging, the project had the primary design goal of creating a typeface family for setting text in newspapers and periodicals. The result, however, is... Read More

Brioso is a new typeface family designed in the calligraphic tradition of the Latin alphabet. Brioso displays the look of a fi nely-penned roman and italic script, retaining the immediacy of hand lettering while having the scope and functionality of a contemporary composition family. Brioso blends the humanity of written forms with the clarity of digital design, allowing designers to set pages... Read More

Brioso is a new typeface family designed in the calligraphic tradition of the Latin alphabet. Brioso displays the look of a fi nely-penned roman and italic script, retaining the immediacy of hand lettering while having the scope and functionality of a contemporary composition family. Brioso blends the humanity of written forms with the clarity of digital design, allowing designers to set pages... Read More

Designed by Alex Rütten, Ginkgo is a stylish text typeface. It works well for setting extended passages of text at small sizes thanks to its open counters, generous character widths, and clear and unique letterforms. On top of that, the handling of details such as in the serifs, cross bars, and terminals are wonderful to appreciate when used at large point sizes as well. Gingko received a... Read More

The first sketches for the FF Clifford typeface were done in 1994. These drew inspiration from Alexander Wilson’s Long Primer Roman type, which was used to set an edition of Pliny the Younger’s “Opera,” printed by the Foulis brothers in 1751. The Italic is loosely based on Joseph Fry and Sons’ Pica Italic No. 3, from their 1785 specimen. These Roman and Italic designs combine to create FF... Read More

Designer Nick Curtis found the inspiration for this typeface on a 1920s poster for a German bookseller, by Berlin poster artist Paul Scheurich. ITC Jeepers retains the spontaneity and playfulness of Scheurich¿s original lettering and adds a few surprises of its own, one being the somewhat exclamatory ear on the lowercase `g.¿ It was, in fact, the excited look of this particular character that... Read More

British designer Jeremy Tankard began Blue Island in 1996 with the idea of creating a completely ligature-based roman typeface, an original but complex task that took years to realize. Individually, Blue Island's letters can appear a bit dismembered, but when set together, they are clearly transformed into words which fall in waves down the page. Successfully balancing readability with... Read More

Rayuela (Argentine Spanish for Hopscotch) is inspired by the homonymous novel by celebrated Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar, whose writings are considered key to 20th century avant-garde literature. Rayuela is the result of a 2-year working process, at two postgraduate courses followed by Alejandro Lo Celso at the University of Reading, UK (1999-2000) and later at the ANRT Atelier National de... Read More

Christoph Dunst designed Novel for use in editorial design – which he thinks shouldn’t be too surprising given its name. Yet he also wanted it to work for corporate typography. The design stems from the concern that most typefaces that are popular for corporate typography somehow feel a bit strong and stiff. This is why he set out to create a design that has a swashy and calligraphic appearance... Read More

Based on 10th century Carolingian scripts, Silentium Pro sparkles with a quiet but ebullient sense of the human hand. As a multi-featured Adobe Originals OpenType family, Silentium includes myriad alternate forms, ligatures, and titling characters that add an air of tasteful liveliness to contemporary graphic design and typography. Designed by Yugoslavian calligrapher and type designer Jovica... Read More

Malabar is a type family for extensive text. Its design was developed with a nod toward newspapers. Malabar's characters are seriffed and of the oldstyle genre. A strong diagonal axis is apparent within the curves. Sturdy serifs help strengthen the line of text in small point sizes, as well as define the overall feeling of the face. Malabar's x-height is very high, a deliberate choice that... Read More