Fonts in Focus, May 2006

English designer David Quay created the Agincourt™ font in 1983. Drawn after the Old English style of type, Agincourt features intricate capitals, which complement the more reserved, slightly condensed lowercase. Agincourt is perfect for use on certificates, greeting cards, or anything that should have an historical appearance.

The letters in the Linotype Aspect™ Family fonts seem to be experiments in the handcrafting of letters with just a few basic geometric forms. For instance, the bowels of the letters C, D, and G in Linotype Aspect Intro are all made up of narrow half circles. Features like this make Linotype Aspect Intro perfectly suited for headlines and short passages of text. Its quirkiness is sure to lend a smile to the faces of your readers.
For shorter headlines with larger point sizes, try setting your text in Linotype Aspect Regular, the second member of the Linotype Aspect family. Linotype Aspect Regular uses the same basic letterforms as Linotype Aspect Intro, but reverses them out in white, and places them over bulbous black shapes.
Linotype Aspect was developed by German designer Hans-Jürgen Ellenberger in 1999, and is part of the Take Type 4 Library.

Brazilian designer Eduardo Omine designed his Beret™ family of typefaces in an attempt to create a warm counterpart to the clean, minimalist sans serif of the 20th Century. The most individual characteristics of Beret are the terminals at the ends of its vertical strokes. They are slightly “bent”, simulating a subtle flare. Like many classic sans-serif typefaces (e.g., the original Syntax™ and Univers™), this family does not include true (calligraphic) italics. Instead, a masterful set of obliques has been created.
The Beret family of typefaces is suitable for numerous applications, in both text and display sizes. Beret was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by Linotype. Beret is part of the Take Type Library.

German graphic designer Ralf Weissmantel created Boogie™ in 2003. Boogie, part of the Take Type Library, is an ironic reference to pop art, and to disco lettering from the 1960’s and 70’s. Its round forms and outlines evoke the flashing, pulsating lights and music of that era. Shipping with five different, width-compatible fonts, the Boogie typeface has four different components: an outlined letterform is the base element, and forms the first font. Three additional fonts may be layered over top of this base, surrounding the first font with up to three bubble-outlines. In graphics applications these elements can each be assigned different colors. There is also a fifth font, which contains the base outlined letterform pre-surrounded by three additional outlines of the same color.
Boogie works best in large headline, display and signage applications, where its forms can be clearly seen and enjoyed. When different colored layers are applied, text set in Boogie will gyrate and jive across the page!

Compatil™ Fact belongs to the Compatil Font Family, the first comprehensive type system which enables all typographical elements to be used to full effect in order to reproduce the message conveyed by text information. Four different type styles with a total of 16 weights including italics have been merged into a unique typographical network. There are now no limits to the font user’s creativity. The system is a product of technical innovation and constitutes a new design approach which meets the highest aesthetic standards.
Compatil Fact is a sans serif in the style of American Gothic that is concise and functional, ideal for balance sheets and statistics.
Get more detailed information about the Compatil Font Family.

Equinox™ is the work of British designer Vince Whitlock. This lighthearted typeface is extremely versatile due in part to its array of alternative characters. Equinox should be set with tight letter and word spacing for maximum visual impact.
The Equinox™ Font Family is part of the Linotype ITC Library.

Pirouette™ is based on a logotype that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 – a shampoo container, at that! Already Tateno’s original design experimented with overlapping swash italic letterforms. These experiments grew outside out their initial packaging project, taking on a life of their own. Eventually, they developed into the Pirouette typefaces, which were honored with a first place finish in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by Linotype.
The Pirouette Type family contains six different elements. Pirouette Text is a beautiful, finely drawn Italic hand, which can set long passages of text. Pirouette Regular is more formal, with elaborate Swash capitals. The Pirouette Regular font can also set whole lengths of text on its own, and its letters may be freely interchanged with those from Pirouette Text. The letters contained in Pirouette Alternate, Pirouette Separate 1, and Pirouette Separate 2 do not constitute complete character sets. These additional decorative letters may be further interchanged with those in Pirouette Text and Pirouette Regular to create splendidly ornate text. Border letterforms in these artful text creations may be further augmented by the last member of the Pirouette family, Pirouette Ornaments. .
The Pirouette™ Font Family is part of the TakeType Library.

ITC Riva™ is the work of English designer Martin Wait and appeared with ITC in 1994. Its letters form gently flowing words and sentences and the light stroke contrast makes the font stable yet lively. The contemporary typefaces of the 18th century influenced the forms of ITC Riva and its overall image brings to mind flowing white sundresses, fields of flowers and tea parties. Perfect for invitations and greeting cards, the capitals of ITC Riva can also be used as initials and combined with other alphabets.

French designer Christophe Badani developed the Linotype Rough™ family in 1999. The family contains nine different typeface styles, each with a slightly different voice. The forms appear to have found a unique middle ground between hand-drawn letters and pure geometry, especially Linotype Rough Outline. Make sure to pay special notice to the true-italic forms in the three italic weights! Badani’s attention to typographic detail is not to be missed.
Linotype Rough is perfect for headlines and display work. The medium and bold weights can also function splendidly in text. The entire family is included in the TakeType No. 4.

Saga™ is a rather narrow typeface designed for a typeface competition arranged by a Scandinavian graphic arts magazine. It had to be based on ancient runic characters, that’s the reason of some peculiar angular shapes. Saga is not att all a new runic typeface, but a usable one when the columns are narrow.
The name is taken, of course, from the Nordic mythology. But “saga” in the meaning of “story” contributed to the decision about the name.

Skid Row™ is the work of Japanese designer Akira Kobayashi and named after a song from his favorite film, Little Shop of Horrors. It is an informal script typeface whose unique, streaky appearance was first drawn with a brush and then refined to give the typeface an even texture. Skid Row, part of the Linotype ITC Library, is particularly effective in large display applications.

Smack™, from American designer Jill Bell, is oriented toward a young generation who does not want to mind the rules. The font invites unconventional and playful use. The figures seem to be almost coincidentally shaped. Letters alternate between thin and thick strokes alternate and are accompanied by fine dots which almost look like accidental drops of ink on the paper. Smack is an illustrative font with unmistakable handwriting character and is perfect for cartoons, comics and anything else which is not supposed to take life too seriously.

The symbol family Tips™, (which stands for “Type-Image-Piktogramm-Schrift” in German, or type-image-pictogram-font in English) contains six different fonts of pictograms and stylized icons. Tips Active contains sportive symbols, Tips Astro contains astrological signs. Tips Bcom depicts icons for use in business communication or web page design. Tips Count is a font featuring numbers inside of various circles. Tips This Way and Tips Travel are both collections of pictograms for use in navigation and other signage systems. Tips is a font of Jochen Hasinger.