Deconstructed fonts, Anti-abbreviation fonts, fonts which don't manifest as letter forms, fonts based on the shape of steam irons and carplates - just a few of the varied delights on offer from ACME FONTS. Founded in 1999 by Christian Küsters, ACME FONTS represent various designers all of whom believe that type, as a medium, can be pushed beyond its accepted boundaries. Popular Acme fonts include Battersea, Klampenborg, Carplates, Diwa and Generation.

Still one of the key players in the industry, Adobe continues to release important, influential and beautifully crafted type families in OpenType CFF format, often crammed with an impressive features list. Acclaimed recent releases include Garamond Premier Pro, Bickham Script Pro, Brioso Pro and Warnock Pro.

Alias was formed in 1996 to design and market the typefaces created by Gareth Hague and David James who had collaborated on sleeves for the likes of Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry and System 7. Alias features radical typefaces with a strong design element that makes them suitable as both headline and text faces. Gareth Hague describes their origin as "Combining traditional drawing values with the computer's mastery of geometric form."

Alias has produced logotype and typeface design for clients including Ghost, Monsoon and Sunday Times Magazine. Graphic design includes arts-related projects and book design for clients including Phaidon, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tate Modern, and Birkenstock.

Archive Type specializes in old typefaces found in old prints, books and samples. The fonts, with the imperfections from years of good service all perfectly preserved, bring a 19th century typography to the digital age.

The Ascender Corporation has been authorised to produce and distribute the core Microsoft fonts such as Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet. Fontworks are now able to offer these faces to our customers.

Microsoft's fonts are highly regarded for their on-screen quality and extensive character sets. Microsoft selected Ascender because of their years of font development and licensing expertise, and their ability to maintain the integrity of Microsoft's type designs and font software quality. Now for the first time these fonts are being made available. Ascender has also made many of these fonts available in the PostScript format for the first time. These fonts will also be appealing to IT managers who want to standardize on certain fonts for their enterprise in all font formats.

Australian Type Foundry (ATF)

Australian Type Foundry (ATF) began in 2001 as a commercial outlet for the fonts of designer Wayne Thompson. He felt the world of type design lacked a uniquely Australian contribution, and so he set about redressing the balance. Fascinated by letters since he was a teenager, Wayne began with rub-down lettering and worked as a signwriter, photographer and journalist before settling into the design profession in the late 1980s. After 17 years as Art Director in several advertising agencies, Wayne now works full-time as a type designer, contributing an Aussie flavour to the world of type.

Ever since Hermann Berthold founded the company in 1858, the Berthold name has been synonymous with the highest standards of typeface design. Within every Berthold typeface, each character is crafted with the utmost attention to detail in order to achieve typographic and aesthetic harmony. Famous faces such as Akzidenz Grotesk, Formata and Imago are now available in OpenType Pro+ format including Cyrillic, CE and Greek layouts.

Most people associate the name Bitstream with affordability, especially since their Type Odyssey 2 library retails for less than £1,000, but the involvement of such type luminaries as Matthew Carter is always an assurance of quality. Less well known is Bitstream's involvement in developing the Prima font for Netscape and the Tiresias font for the Royal Institute for the Blind.

Charles Borges de Oliveira started his career as an apprentice to a master sign painter. He soon began to appreciate letters and layouts, and knew that he wanted to concentrate solely on being a Lettering Artist. In 2007, Charles formed Borges Lettering & Design and is widely considered as one of the finest exponents of brush drawn handwriting scripts in the world. Check out all 5 fonts, including the immensely legible Louisiana.

Bulldog

Best of British! A diverse range of display, text and script fonts from the Pat & Paul Hickson stable, a husband and wife type team with a wealth of experience in the industry.

Chank Diesel began making fonts in 1992 when he worked as creative director of the alternative music magazine Cake. One of the pioneering font retailers on the web, Chank is perhaps best known as a designer of fun, cartoonish display faces, however the extensive new Adrianna suite of text fonts complete with Cyrillic support shows he's no one trick pony. The first font he created, Mister Frisky, remains his most popular. Other best sellers include Brubecks Cube and the 'Go Font Yourself' (GFY) handwriting font collection. Grab the exclusive Adrianna BigSmalls free font now!

Club Type

Club Type was founded in 1985 by Adrian Williams, who began his career in 1969 converting many established metal designs for the new filmsetting devices. During the 70s, his FONTS Company converted typefaces to digitised systems and is responsible for many of his own original designs which he drew and cut, working with each manufacturer to make fonts for their unique formats. This experience led to the production of custom made fonts, designs for Corporate Identity such as Jaguar, Renault, Foster's, National Westminster Bank, British Gas, Cross Pens, Marks & Spencer and Branding commissions including Marie Curie Cancer Care, Business in the Community, and Volvo.

Since 1987, a partnership with handwriting expert Dr. Rosemary Sassoon has produced a whole range of font products for reading and handwriting education in schools. These were developed from the Sassoon Projects' research and published findings and cater for National Literacy Strategy Guidelines used in UK schools.

Swiss by birth Bruno Maag was destined to become a typographer. He completed an apprenticeship in type setting - hot metal and digital. He went on to study typographic design and Visual Communications at the Basel School of Design. Bruno worked for Monotype in England and Chicago running the custom type design department before setting up Dalton Maag with partner Liz Dalton. Ron Carpenter joined Dalton Maag in 1996 from Monotype where he worked for over 20 years. Dalton Maag fonts are renowned for their extensive character sets, bullet proof construction and brilliant on-screen legibility; recent releases include the popular Co Text and Co Headline families adopted by Barclaycard, new grotesk Effra Standard and contemporary gems such as Foco, Viato and the modern serif Cordale.

Darren Scott graduated from Salford University in Manchester with a Design Practice Degree in 96. Formerly the Senior Designer and Typographic Consultant at McCann-Erickson Manchester, Darren now runs his own consultancy, Truth Design. Designing fonts was something he developed as a student. He was asked to develop a typeface for FUSE 15 [Cities] in 95 which led to Berlin[er] his first digital font. His love affair with visible language has developed from there.

Device is the font foundry from internationally respected type designer, graphic designer and illustrator Rian Hughes. His broad and distinctive work has featured strongly in such diverse campaigns as Swatch, Virgin Atlantic, MTV, BBC, and DC Comics. Now over ten years old Device is consistently releasing new families and reviving old faces. Rian contributes to numerous international exhibitions, lectures widely both in the UK and abroad, as well as collecting awards for his work. The most prolific man in the type business, Rian produced the wonderful "Ten Year Itch" retrospective reference book in 2005 and shows no signs of slowing down!

DTP Types have been involved with digital typography for over 17 years, developing high quality font software and font related systems. All fonts are available in cross-platform OpenType (OTF) format and include Western, CE, Baltic and Turkish layouts. In addition, the Pro fonts (Delargo, Newhouse, Garamond 96, Pen Tip) are equipped with Cyrillic and Greek layouts plus a host of additional OpenType features, Small Caps, Old Style Figures, stylistic alternates and schoolbook glyphs.

Hamburg-based Elsner and Flake (E+F) feature many distinguished type families. This impressive library also contains timely revivals and eye-catching headline types, designed and given the masterly quality assurance stamp by Veronika Elsner and Günther Flake.

Fathom: PlayStation, Manga and motor racing. Just some of the healthy interests behind this debut collection by Anthony Roberts, a former director of Manchester design agency, Fathom. And the purpose? An attempt to discover where letterforms lose the will to live.

The Font Bureau, Inc.

Font Bureau was founded in 1989 by noted publications designer and consultant Roger Black and type designer David Berlow to serve the emerging needs of microcomputer-based magazine and newspaper publishers seeking unique typographic identities.

The New York Times, Newsweek and Smart were among the first clients to commission type designs. Over the last few years, Font Bureau has designed over 1,000 fonts for over 300 publications, most of them becoming part of Font Bureau’s burgeoning Retail Library. It has steadily grown into one of the finest and most varied collections around, featuring the likes of Interstate, Stainless, Agenda, Amplitude, Miller, Griffith Gothic, Benton Sans and Bureau Grotesque, now vastly expanded and known simply as Bureau Grot.

The Third Edition of Font Bureau’s Specimen Book is available here.

Fountain is the name of a new, young and apparently quite friendly independent foundry - from Sweden! Amongst their newest releases are NUEPHORIC designed by Lee Basford & James Glover from Fluid, DANG designed by Jay David & the futuristic ROBOTRON designed by Dirk Uhlenbrock from Eyesaw.

G-Type:
See Also: G-Type Display Case

After a few years of designing corporate fonts and lettering, G-Type founder Nick Cooke released his first collection of typefaces in 1999, including the families Houschka and Nubian, and the single fonts Geetype and Gizmo. He has designed fonts which are in use by leading companies and publications including Laura Ashley, Hardy Amies, MacUser magazine, Sainsbury's Magazine, The Mail On Sunday and The Scottish Football Association. Chevin, a rounded sans face named after a hill near Nick's home in West Yorkshire, is highly prominent as Royal Mail's Corporate Font. Nick's first OpenType release is a wonderful pen script called Olicana Rough which is stuffed full of alternates and features including multiple ligatures and swash variants; Olicana Smooth is also now available.

Feb 2008 saw the release of Houschka Rounded, a six weight OpenType companion to the original Houschka sans face. Nick finally issued the revamped and much improved Houschka Pro in December 2008. 

HamburgerFonts is a small type foundry producing original and contemporary fonts. The foundry name is a reference to an anglicised version of the word 'Hamburgefons', popularised by type specimen books in the 1970's, and used as a string of characters to determine the look and feel of a desired font. HamburgerFonts is run by UK-based typographer and graphic designer Stuart Brown who has been designing digital typefaces and letterforms since the late nineties.

Heinemann:

The Heinemann fonts were initially developed by the in-house design team at Heinemann educational publishing out of the necessity to find the perfect font for use in early primary reading books and literacy products.

Basic Heinemann is defined by longer ascenders and descenders which help children to distinguish between letters; rounded edges on all letterforms help focus the reader on the individual letter shape; and modified characters (eg. a, g,) ensure instant recognition of letterforms. Heinemann Special offers further modified characters and kerning pairs ideal for dyslexic or special needs use (eg a, d, b).

The Heinemann fonts were developed in partnership with children, literacy advisors, teachers of special needs/dyslexia and primary school teachers, and are now released in response to hundreds of requests from publishers, designers and teachers to purchase them. They have been trialled in schools and learning institutions over an 8 year period, and are a favourite for use in both print and electronic product. The modern, clean aesthetic of the fonts ensures that their use can span beyond educational application. Heinemann and Heinemann Special are available in OpenType format in three weights roman, bold and black + italic of each.

We are delighted to promote the creative outpourings of Nick and Adam Hayes, 2 identical twins currently ripping it up in New York. Innovative faces such as 'Sharp', 'Phat', 'Rayzor', 'Seize' and 'Kneeon', inspired by the club and underground dance music scene, set new standards in contemporary type design. 2008 sees the boys celebrating their 10th anniversary in design.

A new foundry from london-based typographer/designer Duncan Rogers. Duncan’s a sucker for type who probably spends far too much of his time experimenting with display fonts where the individual characters must not only look good as a stand-alone image but also work inside a body of text. First offering Worm Punch is a good example. Image Daddy: it’s gotta be different, it’s gotta be pretty, and you’ve gotta be able to read it! 

International Typeface Corporation: See Also: ITC OpenType Library on CD

International Typeface Corporation (ITC) was established more than 35 years ago to design and market typefaces to creative professionals. Designs vary from classic to contemporary, including newer additions such as OpenType® Pro versions of the ITC Goudy Sans® and ITC Officina™ families.

The ITC Library, OpenType Edition offers more than 1650 type styles in over 1300 files including 100 new releases and over 650 styles not found in any other collection. Prominent designs include the widely-used ITC Franklin Gothic®, ITC Stone®, ITC Officina® and ITC Conduit® families. ITC Resavska™, ITC Tactile™ and ITC Stone® Humanist highlight a batch of stunning new releases.

"Luc(as) de Groot, born in the Netherlands in 1963, studied type design and typography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague under Gerrit Noordzij. He then spent four years with the Dutch design group BRS Premsela, working mainly on corporate identities. A period of freelancing and teaching at the Art Academy in Den Bosch followed before Luc(as) moved to Berlin in 1993 to work with MetaDesign for four years. In 1997 he founded FontFabrik in Berlin. Devoted to type day and night, Luc(as) admits to occasionally finding time to sleep between work, writing and drawing. The fonts in the LucasFonts collection, an eclectic mix of serif, sans-serif and display, offer perfect solutions for typographic branding in graphic design, advertising and publishing. Celebrated font releases include TheSans, Corpid, Sun and TazIII, an extensive family containing 5 hairline weights!

"LUST is the missing piece of the puzzle. The one, small piece you need to either finish the puzzle - or throw it away altogether. That is the moment we wish to capture in our work..." Jerone Bardense & Thomas Castro of this very idiosyncratic Dutch design outfit have also produced a unique collection of fonts. As they explain: "For us, the process is our end product and not the search for any so-called ultimate image. Because in the end it is not the image that endures, but the IDEA."

The history surrounding the Monotype foundry dates back to the Lanston Monotype Machine Company, which pioneered mechanical typesetting in the 1880s. From typefaces such as the Times New Roman® family designed originally for The Times newspaper of London in the 1930s, to the latest releases such as Felbridge, Neo Sans and Soho, Monotype fonts have helped to create various recognizable brands.

Jonathan Hill graduated from Newcastle College of Art & Design in 1994. He initially worked in print producing event graphics for the famous Leadmill nightclub in Sheffield. In 1999 Jonathan moved to London to join Mainartery; a progressive design studio working solely for the music industry. Over a 3-year period Jonathan produced a range of unique music packaging that crossed boundaries between 2D and 3D media. He set up his own studio in 2006 under the title 'The Northern Block' to concentrate on the development of new and original typefaces.

Ogentroost is the typographic arm of Diederik Corvers' Klaar Ontwerpen Design Consultancy based in the Netherlands. Klaar can be translated as clear, open, clean, transparent and pure, all bywords for Corvers' brand of (typo)graphic communication which employs minimal means for maximum effect. A focus on quality, not quantity.

Ogentroost's first OpenType release was inspired by a visit to the Scandinavian land of forests and lakes. The Suomi type family, says Corvers, "is like bent wooden furniture, which they happen to have a lot of. The squared-off round shape captures the paradox I found in Finland, severe around the edges, but relaxed at heart".

P22 type foundry creates computer typefaces inspired by Art, History, and sometimes Science. P22 is renowned for its work with museums and foundations to ensure the development of accurate historical typefaces that are fully relevant for today's computer user. In addition to its in-house font design, P22 now licenses several new type designs from around the world. Each font set is packaged with background information on its source and inspiration.

Building fonts since 2001, Phat Phonts is Australia's newest digital type foundry, a down to earth bunch of fun guys creating original fonts with a sense of humour. They liken themselves to a fine truffle apparently!

profonts is a digital type company based in Hamburg, Germany, under the direction of Peter Rosenfeld and Dr. Jürgen Willrodt. profonts' mission is to release a beautiful series of script and display designs from the past, all in OpenType format and incorporating the necessary features and ligatures that make scripts come to life.

Red Rooster was formed by Steve Jackaman, a prominent and experienced type marketer of long-standing.

As well as many exciting releases, the Red Rooster collection presents a number of revivals of important faces from the pre-digital era, many of which have achieved legendary status. As with all Red Rooster fonts they are superbly crafted to produce elegant and effective results every time. Steve Jackaman's astute acquisition of Les Usherwood's Typsettra collection, and the preparation he put into its digital release, is a particular highlight of this library. Usherwood's Goudy 38 family (formerly known as Goudy Gimbel after the New York apartment store) is one of several exclusives. Others include his Stanhope family, and Shinn by Nick Shinn.

All these typefaces are innovative designs by Nick Shinn. The idea behind this collection was to produce a series of entirely new and original designs that harness certain attributes of more traditional typefaces, but without merely copying or reviving them. In other words a set of instant classics.

Nick Shinn was born in London in 1952 and moved to Toronto in 1977, where he spent the Eighties as art director of an advertising agency. Since 1991 he has divided his time between publication and typeface design.

Famed for his newspaper types, Nick's latest release is the innovative SoftMachine, an OpenType font designed to automatically facilitate an outline stroke of even thickness.

Robbie Smith is a graduate of Reigate School of Art & Design and went on to work in Richard Kindersley’s letter carving studio in London. Now a freelance type designer in London trading under the moniker of ‘Smith Hands’, Robbie is focusing on incorporating the pattern and drive of calligraphy into modern styles of lettering that will fit beautifully into the modern corporate world. His first release is Hoplight, a hybrid modern serif overflowing with character and personality.

With his love of word shapes and text flow, Jeremy Tankard is not content simply to design a typeface. Instead his fonts contain numerous options for each letter - from plain to fanciful - giving the user much more control over the ideas and emotions they wish to convey. Add to this his devotion to unusual and often overlooked English type forms and you have a collection which could help anyone make an original statement. Includes the best selling Bliss font family which is now available in OpenType Pro format containing Greek and Cyrillic layouts.

T-26:

T.26 Digital Type Foundry was established by Carlos Segura in 1994 to promote the development, promotion, and distribution of independent type design. T26 is a major force in shaping contemporary design and typography, representing an ever-growing library of over 3000 fonts by a corral of over 200 independent designers from around the globe. With award winning promotional designs by its parent company Segura-Inc., T.26 has maintained its relevance with a dedication to the broader integration of typography with graphic design, fine art, and popular visual culture.

Fantastically diverse collection of type from Vancouver resident Ray Larabie. Starting out in 1996 Ray produced over 300 freeware fonts for his Larabiefonts vehicle before setting up Typodermic in 2001 to market his burgeoning retail collection. Larabie can turn his hand to almost any type style; experimental and commercial, cutting edge headline fonts, handwriting and graffiti, contemporary text faces, you name it and it's included in this fabulous range at incredibly affordable prices.

Welcome to Ündt TypeFaeces. The foundry features the dark, humorous and sometimes difficult type designs by Marcus McCallion. This award-winning designer studied graphic design at Nene College, Northampton (1990-92) before embarking on his freelance career. He enjoys working for a number of clients - including his current employment with Jonathan Barnbrook (Inoui id, roppongi hills) and is art director for Loca Records (locarecords.com). Ündt has produced custom type for a variety of companies, including MTV, Nickelodeon and TWB.

URW++ boasts a hugely diverse collection of text and display fonts suitable for every purpose. Look out for the hugely popular Corporate ASE series by Kurt Weidemann and the impressive selection of language fonts on offer covering CE, Greek, Turkish, Cyrillic etc. Other notable families include URW Antiqua and the massive Nimbus Sans range.
The letters listed after the font names indicate the following:
(T) Text, (D) Display, (L) Laserwriter (former core fonts), (P) Poster, (M) Monospaced, (E) Extremely wide or tight.

In between collaborations with Tony Kaye and Damien Hurst, Jonathan Barnbrook has produced an extraordinary range of typefaces. Elegant and beautifully presented, his Virus collection brings many of these unusual, sometimes disturbing, typefaces together through a vehicle that challenges politically as well as from a design perspective.