Olicana is one of those scripts that simply radiate good humor and cheerful energy. It comes in two variants: Olicana Rough and its more mild-mannered sister, Olicana Smooth. Both fonts successfully mimic true handwriting with pen and ink. Although the approach is definitely informal, these fonts do not look like just anybody’s handwriting: they have truly professional dash and style. But to mess things up a little bit, designer Nick Cooke has added finger prints, ink splats and cross-outs, each with zero width so that they appear on top of the letters, not in-between them. Each font includes a wealth of swashes, ligatures and stylistic alternates to achieve a realistic handwritten effect.

The past few years, blackletter (fraktur in German) has been all the rage — a favorite among hip hop artists, rockers and fashion victims alike. The book Fraktur Mon Amour, a genuine bible of blackletter, displays a staggering number of digital fraktur fonts. Many, though, are revivals of old alphabets; precious few present a personal interpretation of the genre. With Authentic Ink, Florian Schick has done just that, taking fraktur into the 21st Century and investing it with the cool of urban street art and tattoo culture. The font has been very successful at MyFonts — a steady seller since it first appeared. Authentic Ink comes in three versions: Ink Normal, a spirited blackletter with some spiky flourishes, and two outrageous variants called Ink Drips and Ink Initial.

It’s been a while since we last heard from Eduardo Manso, the designer of the successful Relato family. His new type family Geogrotesque is one of the most interesting recent sans-serif designs. Based on a simple basic shape — a rectangle with curved top and bottom — the typeface is very regular without becoming bland or mechanical. Its subtly rounded terminals lend it a friendly appeal at larger sizes, while the sloping horizontals tie the words together into coherent shapes that are legible even at smaller point sizes.

With seven weights, Geogrotesque is a great headline family for magazines or annual reports, but will also work in text of intermediate length and point size.

Insigne’s Youngblood is a script font designed with maximum usability in mind. A non-connected formal script with tall, sweeping ascenders, it comes with two alternate alphabets that have a more restrained look. The three matching fonts can be mixed, even within one word, to create a personalized design. Youngblood is slightly heavier in weight than many copperplate-style script fonts. This makes it an interesting hybrid with a practical approach, well-suited for display work, packaging and the like. Youngblood is a well-equipped OpenType font with swashes, ornaments, ligatures, discretionary ligatures and old style figures.