New Font: BigBlok
A great many years ago when working in game publishing I had a real fascination with doing titles in a strong, super-bold font called Bolt Bold. The truth is I rather overused it. In doing some research I find it on more than a dozen different game books I wrote in the early 80s, all quite collectable and out of print today.
New Font: Shayne
  |
We’ve featured some articles on the designs of pulp novel covers from the mid-20th century, including s look at the fonts used in those designs. We’ve also released fonts based on those designs, like suspicion. These old book cover designs are a great resource for period fonts and lettering, and in going through a slew of them, my eye was caught by the title design for the Dell reissues of the Mike Shayne mystery novels in the 1960s, which use a heavy weight font which mixes up traditional upper and lowercase forms. The font is very characteristic of 1960s book and poster design and similar to the font used for the first Rolling Stones Album and the Mickey Spillane pulp novels of the same period.
The Spillane font falls in the same general style but although it is about the same boldness, is notably different in having tiny serifs on the characters. It also uses just uppercase forms rather than mixing upper and lowercase, but in developing the Shayne font it was a useful reference for what the uppercase variants might look like.
The end result in the Shayne font is a heavy weight which mixes upper and lowercase character forms in a way which is very characteristic of 1960s design. It’s as excellent for posters and book covers today as it was when the Mike Shayne novels were popular.
The Mike Shayne mystery novels were written by a series of writers under the name Brett Halliday, and though they are not much remembered today, they were very popular, spawning 12 movies, a radio show and a television series. They followed the popular private eye conventions of the period, including the classid drawing room denouement with all of the suspects present. The series began in the 1930s and reached its peak of popularity in the late 1950s before being supplanted by racier hard-boiled detective fiction.
The demo version of the font can be downloaded for free. If you like it, you can download the full version with both character sets from our ONLINE STORE for just $24.
New Font: Treadway
 Treadway is a new, original design in the tradition of futuristic advertising scripts of the mid-20th century, inspired by fonts like Kaufmann and Gillies, but with a stronger, more clearly defined look, stripped down to its most stylized essentials for a very powerful visual impact. It is the kind of type you’d expect to see on the fin of a vintage sports car or in an ad for early transatlantic jet service. Very stylish and widely appealing.Treadway has precise custom kerning and includes three custom weights – light, regular and bold.You now also have the option of using our new type preview tool to view custom samples of text in this font. In honor of this major new font release we are offering a $5 discount on the purchase of Treadway through midnight tonight. Just use the code AVANTI on checkout. |
BUY NOWTRY DEMO
Custom Preview
|
New Font: Fougasse
| Fougasse is a bold title font which has a unique combination of elements, including an unusually heavy weight, some unusual Art Deco period character forms and rough outlines to the character which are not too pronounced, but give it a sort of a naturalistic look which makes the characters stand out more. Fougasse gets its name from a heavy style of cannon used in Renaissance Italy because the look for the font is a bit reminiscent of heavy cast iron pieces.
Fougasse includes a full set of upper and lower case characters plus some special alternate character forms and ligatures. It’s excellent for designing posters or doing book titles.Y ou can try the DEMO version of Fougasse for free. The demo has a limited character set, but you can still get a good feel for how the font works. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. You now also have the option of using our new type preview tool to view custom samples of text in this font. |
BUY NOWTRY DEMOCustom Preview |
New Font: Diomedes
| Once again we are calling on the classic early 20th century lettering work of J. M. Bergling to produce a new font with a timeless look which combines elements of text and titling styles for a versatile and elegant effect. Diomedes includes a full set of upper and lower case characters plus an interesting selection of alternative lower case characters with decorative elements. It’s great for making web buttons or designing greeting cards or doing book chapter titles.
You can try the DEMO version of Diomedes for free. The demo has a limited character set, but you can still get a good feel for how the font works. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. You now also have the option of using our new type preview tool to view custom samples of text in this font. |
BUY NOWTRY DEMO
|
New Font: Death Ray
|
When we did a font (and a feature article) recently based on a design by Alexander Rodchenko, the result was a very cool font, but while it was based on Rodchenko lettering, it is not the style most associated with his work. The tall thin look of the Rodchenko font is less typical of his work than the heavier, bolder constructed characters which ultimately became the standard model on which much of later Soviet-era poster lettering was based.
Then, in a bit of synchronicity we were called on to design a graphic for “Stop Cyber Spying Week”, the week of online protests against the CISPA bill which was being considered by Congress. It’s a terrible piece of legislation which lets the government search your email and files without due process of law, so it seemed appropriate to base the design on the ominous look of Rodchenko’s “Death Ray” poster. Since the poster was originally in Russian and the redesign needed to be in English all the fonts had to be replaced, so for accuracy that meant making a new font for the main title to match the original lettering with a more complete English character set. From there it was logical to expand it to a full font. The resulting font has a classic Russian poster look but a complete set of characters in English, including both an outline style as is featured in the original poster and a solid version for other uses. It does not include a set of cyrillic characters, but does have some special and alternate characters and punctuation. It may make the font even more appealing to know that $5 out of every copy of Death Ray sold will go to help underwrite efforts to fight CISPA when it goes up for consideration in the Senate. So you can get a cool font and also help protect internet privacy. You can try the DEMO version of Death Ray for free. The demo has only one version of each character, in alternating positions so you can get a feel for how the font works. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
GET DEATH RAY |
New Font: Monstrous
| It’s time for something new and strange, our new and original Monstrous font. Monstrous is a titling font which offers a striking look and special features which make it truly unique. The characters are stylized and super-bold, but what really sets the font apart is that there are two complete character sets which are complimentary. The upper-case set tapers towards the bottom of the characters and the lowercase set tapers towards the top of the characters. So if you alternate upper and lower case characters you get a great nesting effect where the characters form a continuous block effect which is really arresting. The system also extends to the numbers and punctuation. The look produced is truly monstrously cool, somewhat in the tradition of 1960s horror movie fonts or some Art Deco fonts like Semiramis.
You can try the DEMO version of Monstrous for free. The demo has only one version of each character, in alternating positions so you can get a feel for how the font works. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
BUY NOW
|
Featured Font: Illuminata
| Illuminata was inspired by lettering from a poster from the Fillmore in the 1960s. It was originally released in 2001 as part of the Psychedelic Fonts package and then later further developed for the Oroborosgame project. This latest revision features additional characters and rather than having just one version of the unique, super tall and narrow character set it features a set of custom extra bold versions of the characters on the upper case and the regular lighter weight characters for the lowercase.
You can try the DEMO version of Illuminata for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
BUY NOW
|
Classic Font: Dromon
| Dromon has been one of our most popular and most successful display fonts. It’s a modern, super-bold headline style with some clear ancestry in German gothic type design, but a unique and contemporary look. This new release of Dromon includes additional characters and improved outlines. It’s crisper and cleaner and excellent for many uses. The RV dealer at the end of my street uses it for their logo and signs and it looks great. I think it’s particularly effective as a font to fill with images or textures because it’s so bold. This new release also includes a custom outline version of the full character set.
You can try the DEMO version of Dromon for free. Or you can ORDER the full version for only $24 online and download it right away. |
BUY NOW
|
St. Patrick’s Day Bonus Font: Coverack
| Some years ago, while traveling in Cornwall I saw some unique hand lettering on a signboard outside of a pub and later I reconstructed the fanciful Celtic lettering style from memory to produce what became the Coverack font. Coverack is in the tradition of Celtic uncial lettering, but is extra bold and has some fantastical embellishments and special symbol characters.. The name comes from a lovely little town on the Cornish coast where we stayed during the trip.
This updated version of Coverack has some additional special characters and improved kerning and character positioning. It features different versions of each character in the upper and lower case positions as well. It’s really a remarkable font with a lot of unique Celtic character. You can try the DEMO version of Coverack for free (limited character set), or you can ORDER the full version online and download it right away. |
 
BUY IT NOWTRY the DEMO |
New Font: Posada
José Guadalupe Posada was a Mexican printer, engraver, cartoonist and illustrator of the late 19th and early 20th century who was enormously influential on the development of Mexican Folk art styles which continue today. Posada is best known for his Calavera cartoons and illustrations which satirized his fellow Mexicans as skeletons in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos. Many of Posada’s cartoons were published as single-sheet handbills and included original hand-lettered captions and titles in a style reminiscent of period newspaper headlines. We’ve previously collected many of Posada’s Calavera lithographs in our Macabre Fonts and Art Collection and now we’re releasing our first font based on Posada’s lettering, somewhat unimaginatively tagged with his name. It’s a rough and bold all-caps character set with alternative caps on the lower case keys, with an offset positioning which Posada used in a number of his cartoons, as demonstrated in the sample to the right. You can try out the free demo version of Posada for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the characters of the standard set. The full combined version of Posada is available on our Ordering Site.
