Device is the label of multi-talented Rian Hughes of London. His fonts show a splendid diversity of approach, reflecting his work in illustration, comics, logos, animations, music biz paraphernalia, and yes, even corporate work.
Rian has a healthy habit of building fully-fledged families for those fonts that deserve them – all the weights from super-light
to super-bold, with their italics. Such professionally produced families have a decent chance of tempting one away from the classics! In that vein, we just love Paralucent: it should be on your short-list whenever you want to veer away from Helvetica subtly for a discerning client. Includes delicious Thin and Heavy weights. For a harder,
squarer feel, try Register – again a font with a wide range of weights to keep up with all tasks. If your client prefers a softer Gill look, then try out English Grotesque.
For comics, Rian offers a great range. For a funky look, try Bordello, Space Cadet, Bingo, or Blackcurrant. From real comics now: for a grunge/industrial look, use Doom Platoon (Rian developed it from
a logo he did for DC Comics’ Doom Patrol); and he is also responsible for fonts used in the Judge Dredd strip in 2000AD: his Judgement comes in 18 styles (the last one’s stacked with Dredd icons). Also designed for 2000AD is Scrotnig: it’s Tharg-speak for ‘great’, dontcha know?!
Onwards to fonts for fashionistas... September is an ultra-trendy wide display sans. Sinclair
and Freeman are tight-set, narrow sans with hairline counters that match the space between letters. Lusta plays on this idea too, 7 styles with letterforms made of thin neon-like strokes, some of amazing intricacy. Rewinding now (but hey, that time is back again), what 1970s magazine editor wouldn’t have loved to have his logo in the luscious Novak?
Device scores highly on
scripts too. Chascarillo is the cutest, Reasonist is a brush loaded with paint yet beautifully applied, and Gargoyle is a chunky bang-up-to-date blackletter with novel touches.
Let’s finish with some car-themed fonts. Motorcity is a picture font for laying out streets. Zinger is a super retro trunklid script. Autofont has pics of cars and other vehicles whizzing along, Wacky
Racers style: hot-rods, bikes, buses, trucks, skateboarders and even traffic cones are all here. Puffs of smoke make your vehicles go faster or indicate engine blow-ups: your choice! (While Gran Turismo sounds like a car font, its most prominent use thus far has been for that popular beat combo, Steps.)
Spot Device fonts in the wild: Paralucent is used in the Loaded and Heat, magazines,
English Grotesque in Harper’s Bazaar, and MTV uses Scrotnig for on-screen credits. Citrus was produced for the Body Shop’s ‘Street Scents’ campaign.
Special offer: Vertex Medium free with any Device fonts purchased until December 31. Scrotnig!
LetterPerfect is one of the longest-standing independent digital foundries, formed by Garrett Boge back in 1986. After being a designer and calligrapher at Hallmark Cards, Garrett worked typographically with Microsoft,
Monotype and Apple, and has been there at the birth of new font technology. With fellow lettering artist Paul Shaw (custom fonts for Rolex, Est?e Lauder and others), the company has been built up its two collections, Vive la Fonts and Legacy of Letters.
Vive la Fonts
consists of 32 contemporary script and display faces: Wendy is a very popular, friendly script; Spring is vivacious and fresh without apparent effort; Spumoni (used in our big 30% graphic above) is perhaps how Signor Bodoni himself drew his birthday greetings; Florens looks more the formal guy at the ball – until you see how much he’s having with his swash alternates!
Legacy of Letters, the more serious-minded collection, pays homage to lettering
models from history. Refined Renaissance lettering is reflected in designs honoring the Florentine masters Donatello and Ghiberti, and the very elegant Beata. Monumental Baroque inscriptions were the inspiration for Pontif, and Pietra is
modeled on the five-foot tall mosaic lettering high above the floor in St. Peter’s in Rome. Also from this period we have the more refined Cresci, based on the exemplars of the writing master Giovan Francesco Cresci, author of Il Perfetto Scrittore (The Perfect Script). The collection rounds off
with typefaces based on two art movements of the 20th century: the Vienna Secession (the Kolo family), and Scandinavian Moderne (the Swedish Set: Uppsala, Goteborg and Stockholm).
Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Arthur Baker Designs and Maverick Design
together showcase the work of type designer and renowned calligrapher Arthur Baker. Originally from the West Coast US, Arthur is the author of over 20 books on calligraphy. (He loves paper as well as the pen, shown by
his other book: Cut and Assemble Paper Airplanes That Fly!) These typefaces add real character to your designs at a stroke. Our favorites are Mercator, Calligraphica, the calligraphic text family Hiroshige Antique,
the inline decorative Sassafras, and the delightful calligraphic ornaments of Fishface. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
FDI, the
studio of Ralf Herrmann in Jena, Germany, brings us Logotypia Pro. It’s an OpenType font built for one thing: logo-making. This sleek, wide sans-serif is caps only, and includes Cyrillic characters for Russian. OpenType features include swash alternates. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Subtitude
of Montreal brings us Subinter, a nice font for low-res applications in two weights that’s had a year of tweaking by designers Valérie Desrochers and Sébastien Théraulaz after starting out as a design for a transportation company. Special offer: 30% off until Dec 31.
Lomax Design
of Jefferson Lomax (Layton, Utah) brings us Maximo, a geometric font with an atypical twist. As influences Lomax cites his son’s scribbles, snowboard design, and Rudolf Koch. Special offer: 20% off until Dec 31.
Gigofonts come
from Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and are all by Matevz Medja (he’s a magazine designer and corporate identity guy who runs the award-winning Gigodesign firm). Gf Selfcensor is a fine all-lowercase design, where each letter takes up the full vertical space. It works surprisingly well, and
has a matching set of icons. Gf Script No 4 is based on lettering in an old specimen book, and preserves some of its irregularities. Extra fonts contain swashes for the start and end of words, and some tasty ornaments. And when you’re done with the serious stuff, try Blackmail and Spacetrash – people will react to you in complete new ways! Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 15.
Phat Phonts is a
new micro-foundry from Australia which concentrates on value-for-money display fonts for low-end publishing and design applications. Fonts include the grungy and battered Decon, and cool, wide Equaliser and Pontoon. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
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Mecanorma was a household name in Europe just like Letraset in the United States and Great Britain. First making their
mark with instant rub-down lettering, as technology changed they realized they’d become a type foundry. Although the company left the business in 1995, their type collection lives on and is presented here by ITF. It really is a true “complete library”, and we recommend you make your acquaintance with its 190 styles
– it’s been out of the limelight for too long! We’ll pause just to mention one of their designers, to whom we’re pleased to give exposure: José Mendoza y Almeida, a talented Franco-Spanish designer who worked alongside the great Roger Excoffon in the late 1950s. We encourage you to check out his swash script Fidelio, the subtle flared calligraphic sans that is Pascal, and the
jolly Sully Jonquieres, whose light-heartedness impedes in no way its abilities at tackling longer texts. Special offer: all fonts 20% off until Dec 31.
Scangraphic Digital Type Collection. Before personal computers and desktop publishing became popular, many pre-press manufacturers developed libraries of typefaces, designed to work specifically with their equipment. Only later
were these typefaces turned into computer fonts. In the last 20 years, Scangraphic has established itself as a leading manufacturer of pre-press equipment, but at the same time has created a huge library of more than 1700 fonts. In 2004, the entire Scangraphic font library was digitally remastered, and additional characters such as @ and the Euro were added. The unique feature of the typefaces is that each comes in two versions: Body (SB) and Headline (SH), specially optimized for small or large point sizes.
Zapf Renaissance
is an elegant calligraphic typeface designed by renowned type designer Hermann Zapf. Designed exclusively for Scangraphic, Zapf Renaissance was later available from other foundries, such as Linotype and Elsner+Flake. The original Scangraphic version now premieres at MyFonts. Equipped with small caps and an extensive set of swash characters, Zapf Renaissance is a beautiful typeface for greeting cards, invitations, brochures and elegant texts.
Another Scangraphic original is Today Sans, a highly legible, humanist sanserif family designed by Volker K?ster. Designed in 1988, it looks astonishingly fresh and modern today, making many contemporary sanserifs look really old. This perfectly executed family ranges from extra light to ultra bold, includes distinctive italics and is an excellent choice for advertising, brochures, magazines, logos and websites.
Dutch designer
Jelle Bosma created Forlane, a distinctive book and newspaper typeface with unusually long ascenders and square serifs. Another favorite of ours is Mahlau, an elegant
geometric art deco typeface with many alternates and ligatures in place of uppercase letters.
Granby is a friendly geometric sans in the spirit of Gill Sans, Metro #2 and Futura. We also like La Salle, a decorative brush script. Finally, we recommend taking a look
at Neue Luthersche Fraktur, one of the most elegant blackletter typefaces available. Unlike other versions, the Scangraphic version also includes bolder variants. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Prime Graphics brings
together the designs of American designer Karl Nayeri. His 109 styles include funky decorative fonts and many useful picture and ornament fonts: check out Polytype Birds, Polytype Holidays,
Polytype Dumas II Frames, Polytype Business Icons. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
ABC Types brings us the fonts of British designer Tony Mayers. He started
his career producing film titles in London’s West End where he also learned the art of photosetting. His 13 font families include the major sans-serif Generation Gothic. In the UK you’ll see it on Virgin Trains and in their magazine, a client that surely appreciate its amazing 9 weights and condensed cuts – and perhaps even its grunged-up incarnation.
Another popular family, with a similar range of weights, is Concept Sans: with this one Tony cuts away parts of the letters. We also liked his Society narrow sans and the sturdy art deco Poster Gothic. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Cruz Fonts are
from the hand of American designer Ray Cruz. He has been a designer of custom lettering, custom typefaces, and typographic design, to major ad agencies, publishers and corporate clients in the New York City area for almost 30 years. Ray’s typestyles are mostly display faces; many have been published as exclusives by Bitstream, Garage Fonts and
others. Here he offers Troubadour, full of a charming energy, and Cruz Handy, a casual sans whose stroke ends simulate the brush as it leaves the page. Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Volcano is Lars Harmsen and Boris Kahl and other designers from Karlsruhe, Germany. Originally their designs were “earthy ... created by chance ... quickly whisked up and devoured ... uncouth forms,
erupted from the bowels of the earth ... stressed, humiliated ... far too expressive ... quite indisputably from nature ... raw”. Got that? Well, since then they’ve been through a period of “tight concept, linear work, disciplined preparation ... digital cool, sober, reduced ... like chess: the board is always the same, the moves always different ... classic openings followed by unfamiliar variants”.
They now produce fonts “between digital and analogue ... straightened rivers ... the surfaces of our times”. Anyway, we like Fraktendon (a combination of Clarendon and Fraktur, would you believe!) and Digibo. Others are dotty or dashy, hi-tech or low-tech (who can tell the difference?). Use as you wish as long as you’re not as many steps behind your audience as you think you are in front... Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Lerfu, the studio of Mark Shoulson in Highland Park, New Jersey, offers two Hebrew fonts: Shen
is Mark’s own design, while Gill Hebrew is a fascinating, little-known, experimental design by that 20th century great, Eric Gill (of Gill Sans fame). Mark, who believes this to be its first digitization, comments: “Gill introduced strange serifs and shapes that were jarring to readers used to more traditional fonts. But it is quite readable, and does start to grow on you after a while.” Special offer: all fonts 30% off until Dec 31.
Protimient is a British foundry offering the work of Ben Jones, a graphic designer and typographer based in Berkshire. Caligne and Caligne Sans,
his quirky yet full-featured text families, are proving popular already. His other type families are Lightbox, Cale and Modern Modern. Special offer: all fonts 33% off until Jan 1.
StockBucket, formed 2004 in Seattle, is the partnership of graphic desginers David Phillips and Traci Daberko. Eight families of fonts, including: Bamboo, a tropical paradise (just add color); Princess is
a charming, girly script; B-52 is based on lettering from U.S. military vehicles and includes a fifteen character dingbat set.
Highground offers three fonts from Matthew Napolitano: two graffiti fonts and a geometric. Rase One is
the popular one, with two sets of funky letters to “tag” anywhere you darn well please! Note: MyFonts does not officially endorse creative defacement of public or private buildings, or other people’s websites, umm, is that enough? Special offer: buy RaseOne and add another font to your cart free, until Dec 31.
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