# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Type specimens are time capsules of typographic history. There is no substitute for seeing them in person, but you can now use a web browser to track the evolution of type design through the pages of over three hundred manufacturer catalogs from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. For years, I accessed these books via an unwieldy pile of bookmarks, downloads, and repetitive searches. As far as I know, there is no central register of digitized type specimens . This database attempts o fill that gap.

Until recently, books like these were accessible only in rare book rooms and private collections, but we can thank a variety of individual collectors, universities, libraries, museums, and other institutions for making their copies available for digitization and online viewing. Many are hosted at the Internet Archive , which provides reasonably good captures for web browsing or download. I often turn to these sources for research, writing, and consulting, and also for identifying and cataloging type at . Fonts In Use

The collection below began with a compiled by of the Klingspor-Museum and expanded from there, drawing from my own research and from lists at Hans Reichardt , Open Library , Jacques André's , and Typography.Guru (whose founder, David M. MacMillan, contributed many of the specimen books available on the Internet Archive). Bibliothèque virtuelle de typographie Circuitous Root

Although it will evolve as more books are found or published online, this list does not seek to be perfectly comprehensive. Nor does it include foundry ephemera such as individual typeface specimens and promotions (you can find many of these by browsing typeface pages on ) Fonts In Use The goal is to facilitate research by gathering in one place the major catalogs that a range of a manufacturer's offerings.

This first view of the database is a simple list arranged by foundry name and then chronological order (or a best guess if there is no official publication date). But there is much more metadata under the hood, and future editions of this page will offer sorting by other categories, such as year, or browsing by cover or title page.

Of course, no matter how hi-fi the digital capture , there is no substitute for thumbing through physical specimen books actual size. Many libraries, research centers, and universities have typographic collections the public can visit, and they offer lots of titles that aren't available online. , Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Butler Library , , Kemble Collection , Letterform Archive , Lubalin Center , , New York Public Library, Plantin-Moretus Museum , and  -  San Francisco Public Library to name just a few  - are valuable resources that deserve our support. Go out into your community and do some digging. What you find may surprise you.  - Silver Buckle Press Collection St Bride Library Wing Collection at the Newberry Library Stephen Coles

You can also narrow the list to books that feature wood type. Other sorts and filters will be added soon.

There is also a new beta view revealing all the properties in the database! This isn't yet optimized for the public website, but you can peek at selected images, notes, page counts, tags, and other data.

- Added 5 catalogs from the State Library of Berlin , which is in the midst of a major along with the type specimen digitization program . (Thank you, Deutsches Technikmuseum !) Dan Reynolds

Years are often estimates. Type catalogs seldom included dates, and some bound together specimen pages printed over various years.

A few of the catalogs are published by printers or type distributors, not foundries. A future update will label these notable exceptions.

This database lists major catalogs showing a broad range of a foundry's offerings. For specimens of individual typefaces, see Fonts In Use .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A directory of 300+ type foundry catalogs available online.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction: Create a 3D Letterform

Personalize your space or event with handmade 3D letterforms - great for home or party decor!

Step 1: What You Need

- Corrugated cardboard, size and amount depends on the desired scale of your letterforms (complete measurements in steps 2 & 5 before purchasing materials)

- Box cutter knife

- Pencil

- Ruler (T Ruler recommended)

- Duct Tape in color preference

- Access to water + paper towel

Step 2: Draw Your Letterform

- Select a desired typeface I recommend a sans serif typeface that has somewhat consistent line weight. (I used Helvetica in this example)

- Print out letterform or project on your computer screen

- Create a scale system for the desired size of you model

- Draw you letterform on cardboard

Step 3: Cut Out Your Letterform

- Use your box cutter to carefully cut out the traced letter

- Use the t-ruler on the straight lines

- For curved lines, start at an edge of the cardboard and carefully cut along your outline. Cut about 5 inches at a time, and slowly cut in towards the center

- TIP: put spare piece of cardboard underneath the sheet you are cutting, this will make it a little easier to cut.

Step 4: Create a Copy of Your Letterform

- Take another sheet of card board

- Use your first cut out letterform as a guide to trace another copy of the letter

- Repeat Step 3 to cut out the copy of the letterform

Step 5: Create the Width Pieces

- Depending on how wide you want your model to be set that dimension as the constant width for all pieces

- For my model, my width was 6 inches

- Use your scale key that you used to create the outline of your letterform and reapply that for each side of your letter

- Remember to also create pieces for any cavities within the letterform

- Calculate your measurements and then draw the pieces on another piece of cardboard & then cut the pieces out

Step 6: Prepare Rounded Pieces

- For pieces that will have a rounded edge (for example, the right side bumps of the "B" letterform), you will need to remove one layer of the cardboard to expose the corrugated middle.

- Doing this will make the cardboard more flexible so it an easily take the shape of the curved letters.

- Identify the width pieces that are curved edges and use water and paper towel to get one side of the cardboard wet. Get it wet enough to soak through the first layer of paper but not wet enough to soak into the corrugate middle.

- TIP: practice getting the cardboard wet on a spare piece, this will help you judge how much water is needed to only get the first layer wet.

- When the top layer is wet it will become soft and will be easy to remove if you pull it up from a corner or the sides.

- If the corrugate also gets wet, leave it out to dry. Make sure it is dry before you proceed to the next step.

Step 7: Begin Constructing Your Letterform

- Start with any cavities.

- Your pieces should match up with the top and bottom flat letters.

- Line everything up and get out your duct tape!

- Cut duct tape into small pieces (2-4 inches).

- Once you completed the inner cavity pieces and connected those to both your front & back flat letters, move on to the outside layer of your letter.

Step 8: Complete!

- Use the duct tape to complete your desired look. You could only do the seams of the 3D structure or you could cover the full model with duct tape.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create a 3D Letterform: Personalize your space or event with handmade 3D letterforms - great for home or party decor!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Space is how we perceive things: either flat (2D) or dimensional (3D).

Consequently, in order to understand the medium, there is a need for recognising the space in which it operates. The medium is the vehicle for communicating the designed artifact. Space and medium affect the nature of the designed artifact. The display is the mode of encountering that artifact.

The medium of creation is different from the mode of encounter/ format of display.

1. Letterforms can be displayed as 2D in a 2D environment.
2. Letterforms can be displayed as 2D in a 3D environment.
3. Letterforms can be displayed as 3D in a 2D environment.
4. Letterforms can be displayed as 3D in a 3D environment.

The medium of creation lives within the form and affects it- it is the encounter with the formal qualities within the object itself.

The display is the vehicle for perception - emphasis on the viewer's encounter with the object and its objecthood.

[1] and [2] are the scenarios of typographic encounters that readers are more familiar with, situations that sit outside of this study.

1. Letterforms displayed as 2D in 2D environments are the most common form of encounter with typographic form: printed matter, screen-based display of type, etc.
2. Letterforms displayed as 2D in a 3D environment are again familiar in the form of environmental graphics. From a different perspective, environmental graphics can be interpreted as 3D in a 3D space.

However, in these cases, typography is translated to 3D (example: through extrusion), rather than constructed three-dimensionally. What this research is concerned with is what happens when 3D is the skeleton of creation, when letterforms are born 3D rather than born 2D and manipulated into fitting 3D space.

Therefore, [3] and [4] are the scenarios of typographic encounters that are explored and speculated through practice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The RCA Student Research Platform is an archive and showcase of student research at the RCA. This space brings together PhD, MPhil and MRes students from across the College, highlighting the urgency, vitality and ambition of research across art, design and architecture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to main menu Skip to main content Skip to footer content

Collections

We hold physical and digital artifacts in a variety of formats, including books, periodicals, posters, sketches, original art for reproduction, and related ephemera, as well as a robust reference library. Together, these works chronicle the history of written communication, from the invention of writing and medieval manuscripts to modernism, the age of print to the present explosion of digital type.

The Archive was originally founded to give designers access to objects that are often overlooked or inaccessible elsewhere - or, worse, lost to the dumpster. It was soon clear that the need was greater than we imagined. Our audience expanded to creative and curious people of all sorts, as enthusiasm for type and design grew among the general public.

As stewards of important design artifacts we cherish our role in preserving the growing collection, both physically and digitally, as well as sharing it in a way that enriches the community at large. These values inspired design pioneers like Emigre, Aaron Marcus, Jennifer Morla, and Michael Vanderbyl to donate their work, knowing it had a good home in a highly curated collection, but also that it would be seen and used by other designers -  and the designer in everyone  - for generations to come.

Established on the 40-year collection of founder Rob Saunders, the Archive doubled its holdings in 2015 by acquiring the typeface specimen collection of the late Dutch publisher Jan Tholenaar. Also featured prominently in the collection are Irma Boom, W. A. Dwiggins, Amos Kennedy Jr., Rudolf Koch, Paul Rand, Jack Stauffacher, and Piet Zwart. Learn more about these key collections below.

Learn more about specific collections

Get notified about new collections

Browse the Online Archive

Selected Collections

Arthur Baker

Arthur Baker was a prolific calligrapher, type designer, and author of over 20 books on the letter arts. He is widely known for his atypical pen-turning method and energetic letterforms. After he passed away in December 2016, Baker's family donated a major collection of his work to Letterform Archive. The archive includes type design process, paintings, sketches, teaching material, and hundreds of original calligraphic alphabets written on poster-sized sheets.

W. A. Dwiggins

William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956) was among the most influential and innovative designers of the early twentieth century. Letterform Archive holds a large collection of Dwiggins material, including drawings, lettering, original art for reproduction,books, book jackets, typeface proofs, photographs, and correspondence. Much of this collection is featured in the Archive's first publication, a comprehensive visual biography of Dwiggins, written and designed by Bruce Kennett. We have also presented several traveling exhibitions of the Dwiggins collection in the United States and Europe.

Emigre

Based in Berkeley, California, Emigre was the first independent type foundry to focus explicitly on technology surrounding the personal computer. Creating more than 600 original fonts, and publishing a magazine that quickly became critically acclaimed in its field, Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans were early adopters of digital tools, and their work represents a critical turning point in graphic design.

In 2016 Emigre, Inc. donated a major collection to Letterform Archive, including archival material in various media, such every Emigre catalog, development files for original Emigre typefaces, and audio taped interviews and mechanicals for Emigre magazine. Our Online Archive hosts a complete run of the magazine, digitized in high fidelity for on-screen reading.

Ross F. George

Seattle sign painter and showcard writer Ross F. George (1889-1959) was the inventor of the Speedball pen and author of the first 17 editions of the Speedball textbook (now in its centennial edition). George's family generously donated an archive of his work to Letterform Archive. The collection includes drawings for original alphabets published in the Speedball textbooks, his pens (including some early prototypes), showcards, and other examples of his lettering and drawing, account books, papers, and photos.

Dennis Y. Ichiyama ID Manual Collection

Dennis Ichiyama is a designer and professor of visual communication design at Purdue University. As a student, he studied under Paul Rand at Yale, learning the importance of creating within limitations - a philosophy he carried with him into a long career as a designer and educator. While many of his colleagues showed magazines in their classes, Ichiyama began collecting brand standards guides to illustrate the real-world applications of these skills. In 2016 Ichiyama kindly gifted nearly 200 manuals to Letterform Archive so these capsules of design history could continue to inspire and educate students and professionals.

Linotype Master Drawings

Once threatened by dispersal, over 60,000 letter templates from the British Linotype company now have a home at Letterform Archive. The drawings take the form of large cards, each with a pencil drawing of a single letter outline, annotated with measurements, character information, dates, and a draftperson's signature. The collection is a valuable research tool for type designers and students; but it also represents an important chapter of industrialized printing, as the Linotype machine dominated newspaper and magazine composition for nearly a century.

Aaron Marcus

Letterform Archive's holdings include material from all over the world, but a sizable portion comes from creators in the San Francisco Bay Area, such as Emigre and computer graphics artist Aaron Marcus. Marcus is one of the earliest experts in human-computer interaction and has a distinguished technology career, but he continually explores the fields of culture, language, and visual communication. His recent gift to the Archive includes conceptual art that is both beautiful and thought-provoking. He also donated his eclectic reference library with books that span a wide gamut of art, design, engineering, and semiotics.

With a 70-year career creating countless iconic posters, books, logos, and other identity work, Paul Rand is perhaps the most celebrated name in North American graphic design. In 2019 we acquired hundreds of items from Rand's own archive, including process material and personal copies of his work.

Jan Tholenaar

Jan Tholenaar (d. 2009) was a Dutch bibliophile who collected the letter arts in a variety of printed formats. His extensive collection of books, type specimens, and ephemera is best-known for serving as the inspiration behind Taschen's Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles. As Letterform Archive's largest acquisition to date, Tholenaar's 15,000 pieces instantly doubled our holdings when they arrived in August 2015. The collection of type foundry ephemera, in particular, is one of the largest in the world and offers a unique view of typographic and graphic design history.

Piet Zwart

Dutch designer Piet Zwart (1885-1977) was trained as an architect, but is best known as a pioneer of twentieth-century experimental typography and photomontage. He preferred to call himself a "form engineer" because he was such a strong believer in functionality, standardization, and machine production. Letterform Archive's collection features over 150 pieces of rare ephemera, including duplicates from Zwart's personal archive.

Join the Letterform Archive Mailing List

Learn more about our collection, including additions to the Online Archive, and get news of upcoming events, workshops, and publications.

Join the list

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We hold physical and digital artifacts in a variety of formats, including books, periodicals, posters, sketches, original art for reproduction, and related ephemera, as well as a robust reference library.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Virtual access to Letterform Archive’s collection of lettering, typography, and graphic design.

# data[].attributes.body
Hand Job: A Catalog of Type by Michael Perry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this digital age of computer-generated graphics and typography, it's refreshing to find typographers who still believe in working by hand. No longer relegated to designer's sketchbooks, hand-drawn type has emerged from the underground as a dynamic vehicle for visual communicationfrom magazine, book, and album covers to movie credits and NFL advertisements.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Type Tastings are innovative multisensory typography workshops, events and installations created by facilitator Sarah Hyndman, author of bestselling book Why Fonts Matter. She's been measuring the emotional impact of type since 2013 and co-publishes studies. Sarah's a keynote and TEDx speaker. She's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to the Type Tasting Laboratory of curious experiments

Take part in the experiments and you'll be contributing to the new books being written by author Sarah Hyndman.

Pick an experiment and click on the image.

I'm Sarah Hyndman. I'm the author of Why Fonts Matter and the founder of Type Tasting. I'm on a mission to change how we think and talk about typography. I've been measuring your multisensory and emotional responses to type since 2013.

The information I gather is designed to prompt conversations and to be published in my books. Your data is not for sale.

I run experiments on a survey platform and I to take the Pop-up Typography Lab to events.

I work independently. These experiments are not commissioned by clients. This means that I'm free to share what I discover with you. In other words the data I gather isn't hidden behind client confidentiality agreements.

I share the findings in books, writings, talks and via the Type Tasting Substack newsletter. This is a one-woman-initiative, which is also my life and my livelihood.

🚀 Huge thank you to support of the paid Type Tasting Substack subscribers.

Personal information

All of the surveys are anonymous; you will be asked for a little general information to help interpret the results. No personal identifying information is requested or gathered. Read about privacy and your data.

Intellectual property

Sarah Hyndman retains the intellectual property rights to all Type Tasting experiments and data published. Do not reproduce the work without permission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Research - Type Tasting lab - Type Tasting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Take part in the experiments and you'll be contributing to the new books being written by author Sarah Hyndman. Pick an experiment and click on the image. All of the surveys are anonymous; you will be asked for a little general information to help interpret the results.

# data[].attributes.headline
What color is Tuesday? Exploring synesthesia 

# data[].attributes.subject
What color is Tuesday? Exploring synesthesia 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What color is Tuesday? Exploring synesthesia - Richard E. Cytowic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Discover the incredible power of fonts - how they influence your decisions, alter your perceptions, stir your emotions and change how you understand the world. Graphic designer Sarah Hyndman shares her infectious enthusiasm for fonts in this visually inspiring, beautifully designed, immersive and interactive study, including quizzes, tests and case-studies.

'A fascinating insight into how type can influence our feelings, our senses, and even our taste' -- Professor Charles Spence, University of Oxford
'Most books about fonts are written for designers - Sarah brings the power of fonts to everyone' -- Patrick Burgoyne, Editor of Creative Review
'This book is an inspiration' -- ***** Reader review
'Ground-breaking' -- ***** Reader review
'Beautiful and fun! A fantastic read' -- ***** Reader review
'Love this book! Couldn't put it down and read it from cover to cover' -- ***** Reader review
'A really interesting and insightful book' -- ***** Reader review
*********************************************************************************************************
We all constantly interact with type in almost every aspect of our lives. But how do fonts affect what we read and influence the choices we make?

This book opens up the science and the art behind how fonts influence you. It explains why certain fonts or styles evoke particular experiences and associations. Fonts have different personalities that can create trust, mistrust, give you confidence, make things seem easier to do or make a product taste better. They're hidden in plain sight, they trigger memories, associations and multisensory experiences in your imagination.

* Fonts can alter the meanings of words right before your very eyes.
* See what personalities fonts have, and what they reveal about YOUR personality.
* Explore how you respond to fonts emotionally and can make fonts work for your message.
* Be amazed that a font has the power to alter the taste of your food.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in typography and graphic design professionally but also a fascinating insight for anyone interested in giving words impact or anyone wanting to know more about how type can be used to influence us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover the incredible power of fonts - how they influence your decisions, alter your perceptions, stir your emotions and change how you understand the world. Graphic designer Sarah Hyndman shares her infectious enthusiasm for fonts in this visually inspiring, beautifully designed, immersive and interactive study, including quizzes, tests and case-studies.

# data[].attributes.body
Velvetyne is an association and collective dedicated to researching and disseminating typography and typeface creation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new platform for open-source fonts in a noise-free environment, to highlight their beauty, extend functionality and encourage further exploration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From alternates to X-height, this list of typography terms and definitions covers just about everything you'd want to know about fonts and typography.

# data[].attributes.body
make your own font out of pixel components

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
FontStruct is a free, font-building tool funded by advertising and some generous sponsors.

With FontStruct you can easily create fonts using geometrical shapes.

You create " FontStructions" using the " FontStructor " font editor.

Once you're done building, FontStruct generates TrueType fonts, ready to download and use in any application.

You can keep your creations private, but we encourage users to share their FontStructions. Explore the Gallery of fonts made by other FontStruct users. Download them, or clone them and make your own variations.

The easiest way to get started with the FontStructor is to watch the intro screencast or read the quick start guide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
FontStruct | Build, Share, Download Fonts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
FontStruct. Build, Share, Download Fonts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The League of Moveable Type

Open-Source Fonts * Est. 2009 * Trusted & Used By

Back in February 2009 - when designers were just gaining the ability to put custom fonts on the web, we opened our doors with a font, a manifesto, and what was, at the time, a rebellious calling:
To raise the design standards of the web.
We're proud to have kicked off that revolution, and care deeply about good typography and empowering everyone with great design skills.

And we're proud at how far we've come - where the list of companies above is just a tiny subset of all the people & places who've used & featured our fonts.

The whole catalogue of carefully-picked fonts are free to use however and wherever you need, to build on and learn from. Our font pages have FAQ's and all manner of details to help get you started.

Our courses and membership are designed to help you level up your skills, and become a more confident designer.

If you're interested & want to support us, plus learn about type & design - become a member or check out our free Weekly Typographic newsletter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first open-source font foundry. Your source for learning how to use & make type, and level up your skills as a designer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Collletttivo is an Open-Source type foundry and a network of people promoting the practice of type design through mutual exchange and collaboration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Font Squirrel relies on advertising in order to keep bringing you great new free fonts and to keep making improvements to the web font generator. If you are seeing this message, you probably have an ad blocker turned on. Please consider disabling it to see content from our partners.

Alternatively, you can support Font Squirrel by purchasing a paid license from our sister site,Fontspring.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Fonts! Legit Free & Quality " Font Squirrel

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Font Squirrel scours the internet for high quality, legitimately free fonts . Download thousands of completely legal, high quality, free fonts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Barnbrook is one of Britain's most well-known and highly regarded independent creative studios, based in London. We work with a variety of clients across the globe and projects of varying scales. From overseeing the brand identity and environmental graphics of Art Basel and Roppongi Hills to our much-discussed David Bowie album covers.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Inclusive World of Multisensory Typography

# data[].attributes.subject
The Inclusive World of Multisensory Typography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Design does not exist in a vacuum. We are constantly and simultaneously surrounded by textures, contours, smells, sights, and sounds. As designers, we should consider all of the senses when we design-not only so we can more fully connect to our audience, but also so we can be more inclusive.

Every person brings their individual history with them when experiencing a design. The scent of chalk or the sound of it rasping against a chalkboard can evoke memories of grade school. Drinking hot chocolate by a fire can whisk you back to holidays long ago. As graphic designers, we often neglect many of the senses beyond sight, but typography and design are multisensory experiences that can tap into everything from touch to sound.

When we design for all five senses, we create a richer, more meaningful, and more personal experience for all people, while simultaneously accommodating those who may have to rely more heavily on one sense. Historically, designers haven't widely taken advantage of the multisensory opportunities available to them, but a growing number of designers and artists are utilizing mediums beyond the purely visual to welcome a wider array of audiences.

In Meg Miller's article " Is It Art, or Is It Type? What We Learn When Language is Built, Not Written, " she writes about how type designers often "think of language as something physical, as matter. They also disassemble and reassemble it, constructing an alphabet from its constituent shapes." When designers consider traits of typography ( How would this feel? How would it smell? What might type taste like?) through personification, physical construction, and other means-they open up new doors for user experiences. Below, we'll explore a few senses that designers have embraced.
Touch
The origins of typography are tactile: letterforms were carved into stone and pressed onto paper. However, today most people encounter typography digitally, removing audiences from traditional tactical experiences. Still, there are ways to evoke the sense of touch through typography, even if it's only conceptual in nature. For example, nearly everyone knows what it is like to be cold or hot, or to burn their hand, or to feel pain. Translated to typography, designers can summon the sensation of heat through singed type or cold through visuals of ice. Artist Sair Göetz tapped into that innate knowledge for a recent piece called "IVECHANGED, which integrates large typographic forms constructed of ice.

Göetz, collections programming manager at the Letterform Archive, is an artist whose work "seeks to leverage the weightlessness of language to complicate, manipulate, and annotate the weighty matters it circumscribes." They do so through a combination of bodily performance, video, installation, and signage. During the performance for "IVECHANGED," a group of 20 friends carried large ice letterforms reading IVECHANGED into the Olentangy River, where they floated until melting into the water. While this occurred, the artist read "To Be Honest" by Deb Olin Unferth and changed the pronouns in the poem/essay to neutralize gender.

Through this work, Göetz explores both the physical and metaphorical heaviness of words, along with the ephemeral nature of materials. "Speech has a weightlessness in comparison to writing or physical text," they said of their work. "One of my goals with ice type was to have something that began as weighty and melted away - just as language does - so that written words could have the ephemerality of spoken words." "IVECHANGED" is a coming out piece, although Göetz reflects upon how "coming out is an endless process," in that one must constantly restate that they do not necessarily fit into all systems as others might.

In a way, all of the senses involve touch. We see because of the way light hits our eyes. We smell and taste when particles enter our noses and rest on our tongues. We hear because of the physical vibrations in our ears. In essence, all that we experience connects to how we touch the world and how it touches us. As Diane Ackerman , poet and author of A Natural History of the Senses, puts it, "The mind doesn't really dwell in the brain but travels the whole body on caravans of hormone and enzyme, busily making sense of the compound wonders we catalog as touch, taste, smell, hearing, vision." As designers and typographers, we must consider all of the senses.
Smell
In A Natural History of the Senses, Ackerman writes, "Nothing is more memorable than smell. Still, when we try to describe a smell, words fail us like the fabrications they are. The physiological links between the smell and language centers of the brain are pitifully weak, not so the links between the smell and memory centers. Our sense of smell can be extraordinarily precise, yet it's almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn't smelled it (e.g. a new book, lilac)." For designers and typographers, smell can be one of the most challenging to harness-particularly because most of our devices integrate sight and sound, but few enable integration of smell or taste.

While designers are rarely afforded the luxury of incorporating smell into their work through specialized printing techniques, they can still trigger emotion by evoking the memory of a scent. Smell is inherently visceral; when people see type that is rotting, for example, they immediately feel revulsed based on prior experiences. Packaging designers often play into this phenomenon with designs and typography based around the scent of a product, but exhibition design is where smell can be fully embraced.

Graphic designer Cassie Hester created a series of works called " Build It Up to Burn It Down," for which she cast a set of bronze brands in Univers Condensed and then burned them through leaves and linen thread into paper. During the exhibition of her work, Hester said visitors could smell the typography before they saw it. The scent hung in the air a bit like remnants of a campfire. On designing with smell, Hester reflected that "smell can be tricky, because I avoid the gross and synthetic. I find the most satisfying fragrances are those that emerge naturally as a part of the process of creating the work."
Hearing
When it comes to typography, sight and sound are closely linked. As the writer aptly described it: "Writing is the solid form of language." Designers often convey the concept of sound through scale and weight. For example, 72 point heavy Helvetica is much louder than an 8 point Robert Bringhurst Mrs. Eaves. A layout with lots of white space will feel much more calming and quiet than a spread with tiny margins packed-to-the-brim with content .

In the book " French Fries, " designer Warren Lehrer created a layout that choreographs the sounds, dialogue, and interactions between characters and their relationship to place (in this case an American fast food joint). He cast each character of the book in an individualized typeface, style, and color. When a political argument breaks out (set at the height of the Cold War), we can practically hear the overlapping voices and strongly held beliefs against the din of a video game room at the back of the fictionalized Dream Queen restaurant. The typographic design reflects the sonic or what Lehrer calls the "psycho-acoustic" environment as it engages readers to discern foreground from background noises and navigate between legibility and chaos.
Taste
It's fun to play with your food, typographically speaking. The physical properties of food are varied and rich, and the incredible textures, colors, and forms make for an excellent working medium. Food invites a sense of play and taps into deep associations. For example, if someone carves "summer" into a piece of watermelon, I remember specific memories and the taste of a sweet, juicy watermelon. Another wonderful property of food is that the form can change over time when cooked: sugar caramelizes, dough turns into pretzels, popcorn kernels can become popped corn. This evolution is a tool that can be used to creative ends, but it's also the reason edible typography is temporary, by nature.

Lauren Hom, the lettering artist behind often works with food as a lettering medium. She says that cooking is "baked into her DNA." Hom recalled how growing up her mom would make cheese and cracker snacks for her and her brother, and she would cut the cheese slices into the letters of their names. Today, Hom designs lettering using food like coconut milk, cookies, and flour. She says her work has been compared to "sand art-and the temporary nature of it all." Photography is the primary way audiences engage with her food lettering pieces, which means she is often the only person who gets the full experience of smelling, touching, and tasting the work.

Next year, Hom is attending culinary school to bridge the gap between her lettering practice and her love of cooking by potentially opening her own establishment. She sees the incorporation of food into her art as an expansion (not a pivot), and says that "art will always be a central part of my work."
Intersection of senses
Fully immersing audiences in sensory design is a challenge, but designers are exploring how to do so through mediums like virtual and augmented reality. In one compelling example, Derek Ham, Department Head of Art + Design at North Carolina State, created ," an interactive Oculus Rift VR experience about the African-American Civil Rights Movement. During the experience, viewers go through the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Worker's Strike and witness events leading to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By merging visuals, audio, and interactive motion, Ham creates an emotional connection with his viewers.

Ham believes that audio is one of the most underrated elements in design. "The profession of graphic design rarely focuses on audio components, but when I really want immersion and connection-to-space, both the large and small strokes of audio design paint the scene," he says. Ham recalls how as an undergraduate architecture student he had a professor who was all about the senses. One time his class went on a site visit and his instructor asked the students to close their eyes and listen. The professor asked, "What is the quality of the site? What is the tactility of the ground?" Ham said that moment has always stuck with him, and that an underlying texture of sound accompanies everything that you see. That sentiment is prevalent in "I Am A Man, " which Ham says he hopes will make this piece of history feel more real to those who didn't experience it firsthand. "If we use immersive environments to talk about history, it will be real. I think of this in relation to racism as well. What we do with history is distance ourselves. But immersive technology can re-humanize events. Let's talk about what needs to be done. What still needs repair?"

As a visual communication designer, I often find myself relying too heavily on the purely visual. Design is not meant to just be seen. It is also meant to be heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. Designers feel type-through calligraphy, 3D printing, and constructing installations. Visualizations of letterforms can even affect what our other senses perceive. We eat lettering on birthday cakes without thinking about it. Does Hershey's taste like chocolate? Can a brand have a flavor? Would the chocolate taste differently without the text? Blind taste tests say it would, as studies have repeatedly shown people perceiving different flavors depending on what brand they think they are tasting.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Inclusive World of Multisensory Typography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Design does not exist in a vacuum. We are constantly and simultaneously surrounded by textures, contours, smells, sights, and sounds. As designers, we should consider all of the senses when we design-not only so we can more fully connect to our audience, but also so we can be more inclusive.

# data[].attributes.body
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/zach-liebermans-new-app-turns-type-into-a-3d-object/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Watching the videos Zach Lieberman posts to Instagram is a little like watching magic at work. Colors, shapes, and typography behave impossibly; they bend, twist, and burst apart in midair like they're physical objects. The visual effects are far from magic, though; they're a clever use of Apple's AR Kit and Openframeworks, the coding language Lieberman developed to create new media art.

Without a technical background, Lieberman's experiments are hard to replicate. Good news for noobs though: Lieberman and his partner Molmol Kuo just released an app called Weird Type, that enables the technologically challenged to create some of the same visual effects Lieberman and Kuo make in their studio.

The artists developed Weird Type for the Design Indaba conference as a way to make technology like augmented reality more accessible for the average person. "This was a chance to almost put our sketchbook in other people's hands," Lieberman says. The app lets you manipulate a line of text (type provided by Swiss design house Dinamo) by applying one of six filters that effectively turn typography into a physical object in space. You can break and explode type; turn it into a ribbon, merge it with a photo, or let it sit stationary as the world around it moves.

Though it feels novel, Weird Type is carrying on the legacy of Muriel Cooper's Visual Language Workshop, an MIT Media Lab group that in the 1990s was experimenting with early versions of 3D type. At the time, Cooper's students were using early computer graphics software to detach type from its 2D grid. They'd float words in space, giving them a sense of depth and motion. At the time, the experiments were a wild look at the future of digital publishing. Today, those same concepts are finally becoming more commonplace.

You can see it in work from studios like Dia, who have pushed at the boundaries of kinetic design with animated type that appears to break the rules of physics. And designers like Xavier Monney, who is exploring how to play with texture and perspective in his 3D typography works.

Weird Type takes these ideas one step further, using augmented reality to make dynamic, 3D type interact with the real world. To be fair, you technically still see Weird Type's creations on your phone's screen, but the way the type plays off of the space around you is just as important to the final effect as the type itself. "We wanted to do something that was really about your environment," Lieberman says. "Not just about creating content or navigating content in space."

So far, the app has mostly been used for artistic explorations, but Lieberman says he's seen practical uses, too. In one case, a contractor used the app's 3D type to label construction sites. It's a telling sign of what's to come. "It's going to be increasingly important for designers to consider space and get out of the screen," he says. In the future, Lieberman suspects it'll be normal for designers to think about type as a bendable physical object-one that's on your screen, sure, but also overlaid on the physical world around you.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Zach Lieberman's New App Turns Type into a 3D Object

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Watching the videos Zach Lieberman posts to Instagram is a little like watching magic at work. Colors, shapes, and typography behave impossibly; they bend, twist, and burst apart in midair like they're physical objects. The visual effects are far from magic, though; they're a clever use of Apple's A

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Takenobu Igarashi Pushed the Parameters of Typography with His Hand-drawn 3D Letterforms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Japanese-born educator and designer Takenobu Igarashi’s 20-year creative career brought an architectural understanding of form and space to the world of typography, paving the way for a new field of dimensional type from the mid-1970s to today. His explorations in 3D typography started as axonometri

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Just as Homer Simpson once stumbled his way around an interdimensional universe, typography is currently finding its feet in three-dimensions. To help ease the transition, we created a 3D version of Monument Grotesk in collaboration with Manuel Roßner of Hightype. Named HT Standard, this 3D typeface chimes perfectly with its flat counterpart - and vice versa - allowing for seamless design across differing dimensions.

All of HT Standard's core characters are available as individual 3D models, which means they can be animated and modified in their shapes. They've been drawn with a carefully plotted equal distribution of polygons, so that however you edit or embolden their forms, they'll remain smooth and without any unwanted corners or glitches. Below, we've broken down our work and thinking process step-by-step.

To prepare Monument Grotesk as a base for 3D modelling, we had to solve the problem of the typeface's overshoots and undershoots. These parts of letterforms-that make rounded characters feel equally big when placed next to horizontally cut characters-don't work in 3D space. With them, the characters sit too high, and appear too tall, when placed on a ground plane.

To solve this problem, we found two ways of optimising characters with over- and undershoots for 3D modelling and typesetting. On the left, you'll see the first: Characters only reach below base line slightly. On the right, the second: No part of the characters reach below base line.

In order to create a more tangible and physical 3D appearance, we built on the existing Monument Grotesk Bold weight, pumping it up. The additional weight allows the 3D artist to sculpt the wireframe in a more detailed way.

During the 3D modelling stage, Hightype refined the models' polygon distributions in order to make each character dynamic and flexible for 3D projects. HT Standard includes 76 characters, which consist only of polygons with four edges. You won't find any triangles here.

Additional Information about the Pro/Realtime Version of HT Standard

All 76 character above, which come in separate FBX, OBJ and 3DS files. You can implement them individually on websites without using any 3D software. All the characters are UV mapped

Using 3D software, all of the files can be smoothed. The Pro/Realtime version already contains smoothed files for immediate use. On Hightype's website, you can see a smooth version and the way the Rendering and Pro/Realtime packages are shipped

Additional 3D versions of characters that do not extend beyond the baseline

A lower polygon version is available for modifying on a vertex-level and for better performance in simulations or websites. Every character is also included in a smoother version

The Render Package includes all characters in a single file without the lower polygon version

Below, you can see an in-use example, where a liquify effect has been applied to HT Standard. First, the mesh was transformed in zBrush, and then animated in 3DS Max.

In 2019, HT Standard found itself yet again in new territory; as the leading star in our t¥p3w0rld face filter-part of the Dinamo Face Filters collection-made in collaboration with Tabitha Swanson.

For further reading on the t¥p3w0rld filter, please check the related entry below!

See more about HT Standard over on the Hightype website.

Credits

Monument Grotesk: Kasper-Florio
Typeface Extension for 3D: Dinamo (Johannes Breyer, Robert Janes)
3D Modeling: Manuel Roßner
Distribution: Hightype
Photography & Images: Dinamo, Hightype

{"p":"ssi_includes\/cookie-consent"}

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
dinamo is a swiss design practice established by johannes breyer and fabian harb. we’re interested in the overlap between graphic design production

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
bespoke or retail typefaces and technology. more recently also how these things can translate into physical objects.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
DINAMO is a Swiss type design agency offering retail and bespoke typefaces, design software, research, and consultancy. Founded in Basel, we operate via a network of satellite members across the globe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every year, the London Design Festival commissions leading designers and architects to produce site-specific installations across the capital. For Finsbury Avenue Square in Broadgate, next to the Liverpool Street Station railyards and the exposed steel structure of Exchange House, we designed a playground of 26 coloured chairs, one for each letter of the alphabet.

We wanted to design an installation with which the public could interact. Italian designer Bruno Munari's experimental 'Seeking Comfort in an Uncomfortable Chair' (1944) and artist Bruce McLean's 1970s 'Pose Works' were important influences. Both explore unconventional relationships between the human body and the material environment.

Our "talking furniture" became an exercise in making the alphabet concrete. First we designed a typeface: each letter was made from two folding lines of two standard lengths. Accepting that the construction of some letters - such as the P - would inevitably make them unbalanced, we turned the typeface into three-dimensional drawings, based on human measurements, from which we made small-scale paper maquettes. We then worked with a production company, drawing on their knowledge of metal folding and welding, to transform the idea of folded paper into the reality of folded steel.

We were delighted to see people use our stools in all kinds of ways, with the verbal element allowing people to spell out words and names, much as you might write in freshly poured concrete or draw in the sand on a beach.

Year: 2018

Client: London Design Festival

Location: London

Category: Public space

Supported by British Land and hosted by Broadgate
Photography: Angela Moore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every year, the London Design Festival commissions leading designers and architects to produce site-specific installations across the capital. For Finsbury Avenue Square in Broadgate, next to the Liverpool Street Station railyards and the exposed...

# data[].attributes.body
https://graphicdesignmsstate.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hester_dimensional_typography.pdf

Please note this is just the introduction to the text but introduces some very relevant concepts and references.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Paul Elliman, born in 1961, is a British artist and designer based in London. His work mainly focuses on communication and different ways…

# data[].attributes.body
https://bestawards.co.nz/graphic/student-academic-graphics/aut-art-design/patterns-for-utopia/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An amazing study of typography as object and its connection with us and place. Pushing and stretching what we think typography should be, the form, the readability its meaning and all put together beautifully.

# data[].attributes.body
https://bestawards.co.nz/graphic/student-academic-graphics/katie-bevin-2/urban-tales-shadow-typography/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Urban tales shadow typography | Best Awards

# data[].attributes.headline
Article - Why Trajan, the World's Oldest Typeface, Still Matters.

# data[].attributes.subject
Article - Why Trajan, the World's Oldest Typeface, Still Matters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If Helvetica, at the "youthful" age of 50, can inspire a hit movie and renew interest in everything sans serif, then why not celebrate the other side of type: the noble serif? A proper start would be turning the spotlight on the classical Roman letterform that's spawned no less than two millennia of fervent analysis and debate, and inspired type creators from Gutenberg to Adobe (to say nothing of providing the means for countless inscriptions on buildings and memorials). Award-winning graphic designer, typographer, calligrapher, writer, and educator Paul Shaw was just the person to take on the monumental (pun intended) task of presenting a variety of truly fascinating essays on Trajan-based type in The Eternal Letter, published this month by the MIT Press. (A launch event for the book will be at the Type Directors Club on February 19th.)

Classical Roman forms first appeared in 43 BC as capitalis monumentalis, or Imperial Roman capitals, but it's the text famously carved into the base of Trajan's Column in Rome in 113 AD that the book draws upon. As Shaw writes, "It is the lodestar and lightning rod for nearly all of the individuals-both authors and subjects-in The Eternal Letter." He delineates exactly what makes a serif a "classical Roman" (think Adobe Trajan) by comparing it to the "industrial" serifs (think Clarendon) that appeared in the late 18th century. Classical Roman capitals have more variation in width (the upper case O is much wider than E), subtler differences in stroke changes, a "Goldilocks" weight-not too heavy, not too light-and other structural cues like the splayed legs on the letter M. It's these details that keep designers and artists coming back.

"The fact that classical Roman capitals require more discipline and skill to make than industrial Roman capitals is surely part of their allure. They are a challenge to everyone who takes the making of letters seriously. They do not have to be embraced or even accepted, but they do have to be confronted."

Perhaps the visual magic found in classical Roman capitals derives from their geometry. The book includes two brilliant essays-"The Trajan Secrets" by Tom Perkins and "On the Origin of Capital Proportions in Roman Type" by Frank E. Blokland-showing there's so much more going on than the golden rectangle.

The Eternal Letter abounds in photos, rubbings, and illustrations; there's plenty of armchair-sightseeing of Europe here. But readers don't have to travel to Rome to see firsthand Trajan forms carved into stone. Renowned British letter carver Richard Kindersley interviews two generations of American letter carvers, the Benson family of Newport, who have "forged their own contemporary take on the classical Roman capital-including sans serif variants-in the inscriptions they have carved for tombs, monuments, and buildings throughout the United States." For example, look to the Stone of Hope at the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The book tells the fascinating story of Chicago signwriter-turned-Iowan-priest, Father Edward M. Catich, who, in the early 1960s, upended all previous theories about the methods used to create the Trajan inscription with two self-published books. He also traveled around giving a series of lectures "accompanied by bravura demonstrations of his ability to quickly render the Trajanic capitals with a broad brush." There are two chapters here devoted to him as well as an essay Catich wrote himself and Shaw admits, "his spirit hovers over the entire book, extending beyond stone carving to calligraphy and type design."

Proving that the classical forms live on today, The Eternal Letter includes several type designers talking about their own Roman-inspired typefaces, like Matthew Carter (Mantinia), Jonathan Hoefler (Requiem), Lance Hidy (Penumbra), and Julian Waters (Waters Titling). And there are brief sections by Maxim Zhukov and Gerry Leonidas who advised Adobe on Trajan Pro 3's Cyrillic and Greek letterforms, respectively.

This is no dry, academic tome: each page is alive with passion and images that will make you sensitive to serif letters around you, whether you're a type nerd or not. Shaw has a crisp, bold writing style that carries you along and makes you lose track of time. If a movie ever does get made about Trajan, he's definitely the guy to tap for the screenplay.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Trajan, the World's Oldest Typeface, Still Matters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If Helvetica, at the "youthful" age of 50, can inspire a hit movie and renew interest in everything sans serif, then why not celebrate the other side of type: the noble serif?

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.fontfabric.com/blog/history-and-evolution-of-typography-fonts-timeline/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Although we tend to think of typography as a relatively modern invention, the practice of imprinting symbols into soft or malleable surfaces has been around for thousands of years. We can find examples in ancient Mesopotamia, where clay cylinder seals were engraved with financial transactions, official signatures, and even protection 'devices'.

While in essence you can call any letter or symbol written by humans typography, we mostly associate the word with its contemporary definition, which traces its roots to 1450 and Johannes Gutenberg's introduction of the metal movable-type printing press.

But what transforms a letter into a unique and instantly recognizable sign? Can we identify common elements that are shared by all styles of lettering? Is there a classification system to help us make sense of typography's timeline?

Join us while we take a closer look at the anatomy of type, from Roman square capitals and Venetian serifs to the Bauhaus movement and decorative fonts!

Type Distribution & Initial Forms

Before we, the Fontfabric foundry for type design, get into details, let us first take a glance at how others divide and classify typefaces, and what some early developments looked like.

Perhaps the most widespread system is the one designed by Maximilien Vox in 1954, which divides typefaces into nine separate categories based on common features or chronological periods. In 1962 this system was further expanded into 10 categories by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI), and it remains in use to this day.

The divisions featured below are not 'locked', meaning that any font can exhibit features from one or more at the same time:

- Classical (Humanist / Garalde / Transitional)
- Modern (Didone / Mechanistic / Lineal)
- Calligraphic (Glyphic / Script / Graphic / Gaelic / Blackletter)
- Non-Latin (Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, etc.)

Mediums of human communication are in perpetual motion, and writing is no different. It has taken humanity from the earliest hunter-gatherer societies to the very reaches of outer space, and together with mathematics occupies a vital part of our common knowledge and culture.

Roman Influence

Before the arrival of heavy machinery, we dealt with many tasks by hand, and in Europe this lead to the development of the chiseled Roman square capitals known simply as Capitalis Monumentalis. Boosted by the immense power and geographic spread of the Roman Empire, they set the stage for the entire Western-type structure, later unfolding into writing styles of their own.

These included the dynamic Rustic capitals, as well as the unicase uncial, which helped shape the Carolingian minuscule lowercase ovals with their distinctive ascenders and descenders. An increasingly-literate population had a growing appetite for books, leading to some purely functional changes, such as letters becoming less wide in order to accommodate a faster writing style and save resources. The result was Blackletter (or 'fractures'), a style of medieval handwriting that uses a broad-nibbed pen to produce heavy, often angular letter shapes, and condensed counters.

Incise examples: Trajan, Colus
Blackletter examples: Fraktur, Textura, Schwabacher

Johannes Gutenberg

One of the chief reasons for writing's ubiquity as a communication tool is Gutenberg's printing press, and more precisely, the moveable type that first allowed for the composition of single glyphs into longer lines of text.

The precise and limited number of alphabetic characters of the first Gutenberg font influenced its success, standing in stark contrast to the millions of possible glyph combinations in East-asian scripts, where woodcarving proved easier. Metal's higher durability and the option for a consistent aesthetic across a single font further boosted the technology's reputation and eventually established it as the prevalent form in Europe.

A special typeface was designed for the world's first printed book - the first font of the Gutenberg Bible - based on Textura and Schwabacher due to their condensed counters and increased spacing. The technique would allow for more characters per line, and in turn, more information per page.

Classical Typography

Humanist

These bracketed and often asymmetrical serifs are sometimes called 'Venetian', after the Italian city famous for its active printing community. They tend to have consistent stress angles, moderate stroke contrast, and generally exhibit a strong connection between the actual glyph forms and the writing tool being used, in this case a broad-nibbed pen.

Italy in the early Renaissance period was a place of technological wonder and conceptual redefinition. As society's focus shifted from medieval philosophies to the idea of free will, artists and artisans alike began experimenting in their own fields, defining the period in typography as Humanist.

Innovative printers like Nicola Jenson designed their work in opposition to the condensed blackletter-inspired type used in Germany, which suffered from poor legibility and cluttered, disorienting layouts. This practice formed from the merger of two separate styles - the Carolingian miniscule with its balanced and wide lowercase letters, and the triumphal and imposing Roman Imperial Capitalis.

Examples: Centaur, Jenson

Garalde (Aldine)

The next typeface segment is characterized by uniform consistency with a larger contrast, as well as moderate weight and an oblique axis. Its name is a portmanteau of two typography greats and major figures from the Renaissance era - French punchcutter Claude Garamond and Italian publisher Aldus Manutius.

The French king Francis I proved to be a shrewd reformer, taking advantage of technological advancements to start a reorganization of the country's language and grammar, earning him the title of "Father and Restorer of Letters".

Examples: Bembo, Garamond

Transitional (Realist / Réales)

Historically related to the rational spirit of the Enlightenment period, these fonts had hints of calligraphy but mostly relied on a bigger stroke contrast, stylized shapes with bracketed serifs and round, bulbous terminals.

The name "réal" can be traced to the Spanish term for "royal", and relates to the French king Louis XIV and his desire to produce an honourable successor to Garamond, as well as a worthy competitor/counterpart to Europe's current printing trends. By this point engraving techniques had become more complex, allowing for bigger contrast and finer details, which interacted well with the prevailing art styles of the time - Baroque and Rococo.

Examples: Baskerville, Romain du Roi, Caslon, Plantin (predecessor of Times New Roman)

Modern Typography

Didone

The arrival of copperplate engraving techniques opened the doors to much wider variations in terms of stroke thickness, and as a result many modern typefaces achieved levels of contrast that were previously thought impossible. Didone takes its name from the Didot and Bodoni type families, which were very popular during the period.

Characterized by non-bracketed serifs and very high contrast between thicks and thins, Didone was a direct result of the Classicist ideal for symmetric and minimal shapes that are free of unnecessary details.

Examples: Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum

Slab Serifs

The arrival of mechanistic typography coincides with the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the XIX century. Increased commerce and large-scale improvements in the mechanized printing process post-1811 meant that new typefaces were needed to fill the void.

The newly-found interest in engaging advertising meant that new fonts were designed with attention-grabbing headlines and irresistible slogans in mind. A notable presence amidst all the bold experiments from this period

Apart from the newspaper typefaces optimized for faster printing, the high interest in engaging advertising sparked the appearance of type for attention-grabbing headlines and irresistible slogans. This experimental period also introduced low-contrast typefaces with equally thick and square slab serifs, along with Ionics, or Clarendons, whose serifs were smoothly bracketed.

While the earliest known example of a slab serif dates from an 1810 London ad, the initial impetus was provided roughly a decade earlier during Napoleon's famed campaign to Egypt. The voyage failed to achieve its military objectives, but the Emperor's scientific expedition started an international trend of reinterpreting Oriental cultures, or simply borrowing fashionable names without direct visual input. The lack of convention for all the terms being used lead to a general confusion around slab serifs, thus generalizing the square unbracketed Egyptian and the bracketed Ionics.

Examples: Egyptienne, Giza, Farao, Rockwell, Nexa Slab (Egyptians) / Clarendon, Ionic No. 5 (Ionics)

Sans Serif

By the early 19th century typography had begun to outgrow the possibilities offered solely by serifs, and a new approach towards font design became apparent with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The heavy and highly decorated typefaces of the past now had competition in the face of the lineals (or linéales) - a group that incorporates all sans/non-serif typefaces with low to zero contrast between their thick and thin segments.

The first use of the word 'sans-serif' dates from 1832, when the British type-founder Vincent Figgins included it in his specimen book. Just two years later William Thorowgood released Seven Line Grotesque, which was the first lowercase sans-serif, and the first recorded use of the term 'grotesque'.

Newspaper publishers, store owners and official institutions were quick to adapt the new style, which was not only easier to read, but well suited to attention-grabbing headlines and signage. The evolution of sans-serifs continued during the 20th century, as they became the dominant force in typography.

The last few decades have been marked by the sudden and almost universal spread of information technologies, which further boosted the sans-serifs' profile. They were preferred by software developers in the 1990s due to the low resolution offered by CRT monitors. Even though serifs have been significantly optimized since then, and contemporary screens have much higher technical capabilities, the sans-serif continues to rule the web.

Grotesque and Neo-Grotesque Sans

Retaining some degree of contrast between thick and thin strokes, grotesques were named after the Italian word "grottesche" due to their (at the time) unusual aesthetics. Among the first examples of the type are the 'Two Lines English Egyptian' typeface from an 1816 Caslon specimen, as well as the aforementioned Seven Line variation by Thorowgood.

With their raw appearance, solid geometric design and simple, but memorable letter forms, grotesques made for great display fonts. There was a wide range of variations, but many of them featured horizontal terminals on the curved symbols, as well as sometimes almost fully closed apertures in letters such as 'C' or 'G', or a curled leg in 'R'.

In the 1920s a new form of visual expression called the International Typographic Style was developed in Germany, the Netherlands and Russia. Sometimes known as the Swiss Style due to that country's role in refining it during the 1950s, it was a major influence on the modernist movement, and gave birth to a number of concepts in architecture and art. Amongst its telltale signs are a preference for clean, minimal forms, an emphasis on readability, and an almost religious belief in the power of objectivity.

In the post-war period, prominent designers like Adrian Frutiger and Max Miedinger were advocating for a functionality-driven approach to mass production practices. By increasing and balancing the proportions of the old Grotesque fonts, and then carefully distributing the width and weight, they created a brand new class of fonts. We have come to call these by the umbrella term Neo-Grotesque, and they have been a commanding force in typography ever since.

Examples: Akzidenz Grotesk, Franklin Gothic (Grotesque) / Helvetica, Univers (Neo-Grotesque)

Geometric Sans

Hailing from 1920s Germany, the Geometric Sans style is characterized by smooth shapes and a widespread use of geometric forms, including near-perfect counters and an efficient appearance. The period was a hotbed for cultural experimentation, and gave rise to a number of avant-garde movements that wanted to merge crafts across mediums and formats. Perhaps the most notable among these was the Bauhaus school, where the Gesamtkunstwerk ('total work') concept was born in an attempt to combine art, industrial design and architecture.

The urge to bring functional and simplified creations to the wider public extended into typography as well, where designers were aiming for utilitarian, clutter-free fonts. Herbert Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy were among the early proponents of the style, gaining recognition for their work on Universal Typeface (unreleased) and Erbar (1926).

A year later Paul Renner released Futura, which remains one of the most recognizable geometric sans-serifs even today due to its elegant design and great legibility. The font draws heavily from the proportions of Roman capital inscriptions, and is constructed entirely from basic geometric shapes. It is used in most modern airplanes, and was the typeface chosen for the commemorative plaque left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 mission in July of 1969.

Examples: Futura, Eurostile, Mont, Nexa, Intro

Humanist Sans

While modernists were busy with their reforms, another group was more interested in a softer approach to handwriting and calligraphy. Drawing from Renaissance typefaces, Roman capitals and Carolingian miniscule alike, this new style had much lower contrast, mostly open apertures, curves with slanted stress, and terminals that closely mirrored the strokes.

In general humanist sans fonts exhibit a much wider variety of design than grotesque or geometric ones, and are well suited for modern displays and viewing at larger distances. Some cases feature a combination of narrow and wide strokes, while others are closer to handwriting or calligraphy. Since the 1980s the category has expanded significantly, in part as a response to the immense popularity of neo-grotesques like Helvetica and Univers.

Examples: Johnston, Gill Sans, Syntax, Myriad, Squad

Hybrids

In the past few decades the borders between different typeface divisions have become increasingly blurred, to the point where we can now define a separate, 'hybrid' class. Existing as part of the wider post-modernist movement, these fonts can include features from several categories, and are often designed to be used for many purposes rather than a selection.

Examples: Optima, Gilam, Glober, Noah, Mozer

Calligraphic

One of Vox's original trio of categories, calligraphics includes typefaces with a pronounced hand-crafted or incised origin. We can distinguish between five types of calligraphic fonts - scripts, glyphic, gaellic, graphic and blackletter.

Script

Script typefaces are, as the name implies, mimicking a style of rapid handwriting that uses pointed or broad-nibbed pens, brushes or other similar instruments. While there are variations in width and x-heights, scripts usually feature cursive slants, letter joints and ligatures, and are considered among the more dynamic typographic groups.

Examples: Bickham Script, Mistral, Intro Script, Madelyn, Nexa Script, Sensa Brush

Glyphic

Sometimes referred to as incised (or incise), these typefaces make generous use of tapering downstrokes and tend to focus on their capital letters, in some cases dropping the lowercase entirely. They draw inspiration from the aforementioned Roman square inscriptions, which were often found on stone or metal surfaces, and thus required a particular structure that would be more easy to apply.
Examples: Trajan, Copperplate Gothic

Graphic

Graphic, or manual fonts use a hand-drawn reference which is later replicated with a writing instrument, though with a focus on design and at a slower speed than with scripts. Unlike the latter, in graphic typefaces the letters exist independently and without connections between one another. Manuals are usually reserved for large displays or headlines, and like their glyphic counterparts above, sometimes exist in uppercase only.

Examples: Banco, Klang

Gaelic

Gaelic typefaces were not included in the 1954 revision of the Vox classification, and had to wait until 2010, when the AtypI voted in favour of adding them to the calligraphic group. Though rarely used in official form anymore, these insular scripts were widely adopted in Scotland between the 16th and 18th centuries, and continued to appear in Irish typesetting until the middle of the 20th century. Nowadays they frequently appear on signage and greeting cards due to their decorative style and historical significance.

Examples: Corcaigh

Blackletter

Blackletters, or fractures, are based on the medieval broad-nibbed pen style of writing which developed from Carolingian miniscule as a response to societal development. At that time, universities were being established all across Western Europe, and an increasingly-literate populace had a growing need for specialized literature, and the typography to go with it.

Defined by their angular, condensed and often broken forms, blackletters were initially characterized as a form of graphic type by Vox, since they also use a slow technique with the wrist above the writing surface. As part of the 2010 revision of his classification, however, AtypI gave them a separate category, and also made-sure to separate non-Latin typography in an additional segment.

Examples: Textura, Rotunda, Schwabacher, Fraktur, Fette Fraktur

Decorative / Display / Rust

Last but not least, we have a somewhat broad category that encompasses some more lighthearted and playful typefaces.

We use many of these in poster design, advertising, and corporate typography, where their ornamental nature can stand out. We did manage to add our own bit of custom typography design and innovation to the mixture thanks to the Fontfabric Rust fonts series with its signature handcrafted look and extensive assortment of additional features.

Examples: Cubic, Colo Pro, Cheque, Perfograma, Nexa Rust, Intro Rust, Zing Rust, Panton Rust, 36 Days

Thanks for reading!

This concludes our dive into the mesmerizing and sometimes confusing world of typographic classification.

Fontfabric hopes you've enjoyed the journey, and even though the holidays are just around the corner, we're not done with content for the year just yet - so keep an eye out!

*Images for the sans-serif galleries were provided by Denis Masharov.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History and Evolution of Typography - Extended

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a two-part series Fontfabric takes a closer look at the anatomy of typography, from Venetian serifs and lineals to Bauhaus and decorative fonts!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
86,484 fonts of which:
34,084 with accents
44,397 with the Euro symbol

How to install a font (details in the Help section)
Extract the files you have downloaded, then:

Windows 10/8/7/Vista: Right-click on the font files > "Install"

Mac OS X: Double-click the font file > "Install font" button. Other OS...

All the new fonts
The fonts presented on this website are their authors' property, and are either freeware, shareware, demo versions or public domain. The licence mentioned above the download button is just an indication. Please look at the readme-files in the archives or check the indicated author's website for details, and contact him/her if in doubt.
If no author/licence is indicated that's because we don't have information, that doesn't mean it's free.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author or by popularity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
54997 free fonts in 30871 families · Free licenses for commercial use · Direct font downloads · Mac · Windows · Linux

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find & Download the most popular Free Fonts on Freepik ✓ Free for commercial use ✓ UTF and TTF format ✓ Made for Creative Projects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
subscribe to All Songs Considered podcast

Artist Christina Eve has synesthesia, a rare neurological condition that entwines the senses. In Christina Eve's case, she sees sounds. Last year she sent me a handful of her colorful paintings she made based on music she heard and the visions she had when she listened. I was so fascinated by the way she interprets songs with imagery that I asked her to document the process. You can watch her paint the music of Moses Sumney and Bleachers in the videos below and read her describe what her brain is like on music. - All Songs Considered's Bob Boilen

I'd never be a visual artist if I was not first a musician. I have a deep love of music and especially love how a good song can arrest your heart or communicate things for which there are no words. I began studying music as a child and went on to get a degree in classical music. I geek-out over music theory and love the thrill of performing on stage with other musicians. Yet beyond all this, I experience another dimension of music that most do not.

I have synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon that involuntarily merges senses in the brain. Auditory stimuli activate my visual sense, so whenever I hear sound I see a unique light and color show. Listening to music is always a remarkable experience as the ears, eyes, heart, and mind are all inundated. For me, music reveals shimmering lights and geometric textures in bright colors, and light and dark swell and spin around each other.

As a synesthetic visual artist, I translate what I hear into visible form so others can see the beauty of sound. My artwork begins with a song I've fallen in love with, emotionally, aurally, and visually. In the studio, I put the song on loop and listen and watch to see what shapes and colors appear. I pull out corresponding bottles of ink and begin spilling them on the canvas. I blow air into the color, creating a contrasting lightness to the dark, and form the ink into shapes with palette knives and sponges.

In my work for Bleachers' "Don't Take The Money," I focus on the many sounds contained in the pre-chorus. Each main vocal phrase ("In my dreams, I'm to blame / Different sides of the bed / Roll your eyes, shave my head") produces rapidly-ascending towers of hot pink and lime-green. The bass, plus the interspersed, digitized backing vocals in lower octaves, provide a dark and bubbly foundation. The percussion and all the fun sounds moving in and out add-in flashes of different hues and textures. I collect all these colors and shape them into what I see in the buildup and hit just before chorus: a staircase-shaped, sunshine-colored explosion.

The very first chord of Moses Sumney's "Doomed" is an oceanic, dark blue paired with a rich vermilion. Moses' voice is interesting to watch - sometimes it's a saturated charcoal-black, sometimes it's a smooth aqua - and that captivating, quick, occasional catch in his voice that sounds like an alto sax... it's a moment of sandpaper-textured gold. Warm light enters the scene the first time Moses sings "Am I doomed?" As the song progresses, I'm emotionally affected by the sonic expansion and the emotional heaviness of the lyrics, and I incorporate it into the work. The soaring, far-away vocal cries in the background are a writhing purple. At the apex of the song, light pushes back the dark colors, and recedes again as the song draws back into itself.

As I've continued to create synesthetic artwork, I've discovered that much of the aurally-stimulated imagery I see can also effectively communicate other invisible concepts, like joy or despair or loneliness or hope. There are some sounds that produce a distinct type of deep and powerfully evocative imagery and these rich visuals are able to depict difficult ideas and emotions that might be too elusive to paint, or even verbally express. Music is what allows me to create synesthetic artwork, offering a visual voice to the hidden, complex, and inexpressible experiences of humanity.
More from Christina Eve can be found here

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How A Synesthetic Artist Sees Sounds And Turns Music Into Paintings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
subscribe to All Songs Considered podcast Artist Christina Eve has synesthesia, a rare neurological condition that entwines the senses. In Christina Eve's case, she sees sounds. Last year she sent me a handful of her colorful paintings she made based on music she heard and the visions she had when she listened.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SYNESTHESIA
"Condition in which someone experiences things through their senses in an unusual way, for example by experiencing a color as a sound, or a number as a position in space. A person with synesthesia may see, for example, the number 2 as a green number and the number 5 as a red number."
-Cambridge Dictionary

"Some artists have a nervous hand at drawing, which gives their technique something of the sound peculiar to a violin..."
-Vincent Van Gogh

The body of work shown on this page was created using my synesthetic interpretation of music as inspiration, where each piece relates to a different song. I used the colors and motion of the song (as I see it in my head) to create a visual experience of the music.

Think about the differences in the way we experience the world. Even at a sensory level, we see, taste, or hear the world differently. It is as though our brains are making order out of the chaos around us in different ways. I sometimes light my artwork on fire, which provides chaos. After the burn, I add intricate details, making order out of the chaos.

-Julia Hamilton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SYNESTHESIA"Condition in which someone experiences things through their senses in an unusual way, for example by experiencing a color as a sound, or a number as a position in space.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I See Music Because I Have Synesthesia, So I Decided To Paint What I Hear

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As a synesthete, the music I hear is translated into a flow of texture and colors. Synethesia, although not disorientating, can sometimes leave me at odds trying to describe what I can see to others. Painting in oils and acrylics is a way to express and exhibit the beautiful colors that I see on a day to day basis, whether it’s hearing someone’s name, or that song on the radio.