Optical Sizes

The Handel Gothic™ typeface has been a mainstay of graphic communication for over 40 years - all the while looking as current as tomorrow. Designed by Don Handel in the mid-1960s, and used in the 1973 United Airlines logo developed by Saul Bass, Handel Gothic was an instant success when released to the graphic design community. Its generous lowercase x-height, full-bodied counters and square... Read More

Working closely with Erik Spiekermann and Christian Schwartz, FF Meta Headline was brought to life by Joshua Darden. The design makes Meta work in the headline space, which requires a tighter fit and more compact forms, both horizontally and vertically. The face covers... Read More

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older... Read More

Nimrod was released by Monotype in 1980. Designed for current newspaper technology, the Nimrod font family evolved as a result of extensive examination of newspaper industry needs. Nimrod retains many of the features of the traditional newspaper Ionics, but some of the fussier detailing has been replaced by the more sober forms of the old styles, such as Plantin. A highly legible font family,... Read More

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

FF Celeste is a typeface for designers who like the idea of a Bodoni or Walbaum, but look for a robust and readable text face which tempers the sobriety of romance type with friendlier Renaissance-era features. The serifs tend to the triangular and the italics harmonize well with the roman in tone and width. The letterforms are less rationalized and modular than the starkest modern faces, but... Read More

FF Celeste Sans is something of a hybrid, like its serif companion FF Celeste. Its designer Chris Burke describes it like this: “The serif version is a deliberate attempt to temper the modern face (Didone) type model with old face (Garalde) elements; to mix what Swiss letterform theorists have called the static and the dynamic principles of letter construction. Allowing for historical fancy,... Read More

Borges is a versatile type family designed by Alejandro Lo Celso, inspired by the literature of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It is a very legible & classic type designed with a contemporary feeling. Its delicate sense of rhythm delivers a comfortable legibility at reading. It was conceived for editorial use, though it is suitable for a variety of designs. Borges is composed of fifteen... Read More

On March 20, 1988, Mike Tyson successfully defended his world championship title against Tony Tubbs. The poster for the event at the Tokyo Dome was designed by Neville Brody. Full alphabets based on the letters that Brody hand-drew for the poster were eventually completed and digitized into ten fonts. These form the FF Dome, FF Tokyo, and FF World series. There are three FF Dome families:... Read More

The Arlt super family pays tribute to the writings of Roberto Arlt, Argentinian writer from early 20th c. who wrote some original novels, all of which 'Siete Locos' ('Seven Madmen') is the most celebrated piece. Arlt has a Baroque style interpreted with an expressionist, more contemporary flair. This means the type is full of intense contrasts and vivid, expressive feelings. The italics make a... Read More

When ITC Officina was first released in 1990, as a paired family of serif and sans serif faces in two weights with italics, it was intended as a workhorse typeface for business correspondence. But the typeface proved popular in many more areas than correspondence. Erik Spiekermann, ITC Officina's designer: "Once ITC Officina got picked up by the trendsetters to denote 'coolness,' it had lost... Read More

The initial concept behind FF Acanthus was to produce a “modern” neoclassical Roman that would have a less stark appearance than most French Didot-esque faces. FF Acanthus Regular takes direct cues from the Henri Didot typeface used in “De Imitatione Christi,” published 1788, but itself introduces more warmth and subtlety – this is especially noticeable at larger sizes. At smaller sizes, the... Read More

Xavier Dupré’s FF Absara is a work of French proportions, but its shapes take influence from the Dutch style: less polished, and more direct. Its casualness refers to humanist written forms. FF Absara’s rough cut makes it interesting at display sizes, but thanks to its generous x-height and firm serifs, FF Absara works equally well setting text. The typeface’s idiosyncratic italic creates a... Read More

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

It was only after seeking the help of fellow type designers Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby that Erik Spiekermann was able to fashion a suitable serif companion to his most famous sans, FF Meta. Rather than pasting serifs in place, the process took starting from scratch until a face appeared that looked and felt like a Meta, but that functioned more like a traditional seriffed text... Read More

FF Reminga offers a fresh take on the Garamond tradition, rather sober (for Xavier Dupré’s work) and particularly readable at 10–12 points. It also comes in a narrower Titling version which is adds an even more elegant and calligraphic variation to the family. Dupré made significant improvements to FF Reminga’s letterforms for its 2008 OpenType re-release.

Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches... Read More

In designing Minion font, Robert Slimbach was inspired by the timeless beauty of the fonts of the late Renaissance. Minion was created primarily as a traditional text font but adapts well to today's digital technology, presenting the richness of the late baroque forms within modern text formats. This clear, balanced font is suitable for almost any use.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

Utopia, created by Robert Slimbach and presented by Adobe in 1992, was intended to solve a number of typographic problems related to office correspondence. This demanded versatility, so Slimbach created a font family with cuts for text, for titles, extra bold for headlines, small caps, all caps with numerals, old face numerals, fractions, ligatures and scientific markings. Not just its forms,... Read More

Utopia, created by Robert Slimbach and presented by Adobe in 1992, was intended to solve a number of typographic problems related to office correspondence. This demanded versatility, so Slimbach created a font family with cuts for text, for titles, extra bold for headlines, small caps, all caps with numerals, old face numerals, fractions, ligatures and scientific markings. Not just its forms,... Read More

Utopia, created by Robert Slimbach and presented by Adobe in 1992, was intended to solve a number of typographic problems related to office correspondence. This demanded versatility, so Slimbach created a font family with cuts for text, for titles, extra bold for headlines, small caps, all caps with numerals, old face numerals, fractions, ligatures and scientific markings. Not just its forms,... Read More

Chaparral is the work of type designer Carol Twombly and combines the legibility of slab serif designs popularized in the 19th century with the grace of 16th century roman book lettering. The result is a versatile, hybrid slab-serif design. Unlike "geometric" slab serif designs, Chaparral has varying letter proportions that give it an accessible and friendly appearance in all weights from light... Read More

Brioso is a new typeface family designed in the calligraphic tradition of the Latin alphabet. Brioso displays the look of a fi nely-penned roman and italic script, retaining the immediacy of hand lettering while having the scope and functionality of a contemporary composition family. Brioso blends the humanity of written forms with the clarity of digital design, allowing designers to set pages... Read More

Designed for Adobe in 1993, Sanvito is an informal script face based on the designer's handwriting. An almost upright, non-joining script, the Sanvito font family is useful where an informal feel is required in advertising, packaging and on labels.

Designed for Adobe in 1993, Sanvito is an informal script face based on the designer's handwriting. An almost upright, non-joining script, the Sanvito font family is useful where an informal feel is required in advertising, packaging and on labels.

FF Celeste is a typeface for designers who like the idea of a Bodoni or Walbaum, but look for a robust and readable text face which tempers the sobriety of romance type with friendlier Renaissance-era features. The serifs tend to the triangular and the italics harmonize well with the roman in tone and width. The letterforms are less rationalized and modular than the starkest modern faces, but... Read More

FF Info is named after its purpose: the transfer of information. Its clean lines make no fashion statements, nor do they attempt any technical wizardry. The typeface was initially intended for use on traffic signage,and other wayfinding systems in stations, on buildings, etc. Because space comes at a premium in such situations, FF Info Display is drawn narrow; It requires 15% less space than... Read More

Cronos is the work of Robert Slimbach, a sans serif typeface family that embodies the warmth and readability of Oldstyle Roman typefaces. It derives much of its appearance from the calligraphically inspired type of the Italian Renaissance. Its almost handwritten appearance sets it apart from most other sans serif designs and makes it an effective choice for text composition. The Italic design... Read More

Seeing the possibility of creating a Meta for everyday office use (instead of a specialized tool for graphic designers), Erik Spiekermann expanded the family with this function in mind. The oldstyle figures were replaced with default tabular lining ones and the overall spacing was loosened for better reproduction on a wider variety of screens, printers, copiers, and fax machines. In 2012... Read More

The family that became FF Meta was first called PT55, an economical typeface made for easy reading at small sizes created for the West German Post Office in 1985. Erik Spiekermann later improved and expanded his design to include more weights and styles, and prepared its release as FF Meta, one of the first and truly foundational members of the early FontFont library. As desktop publishing... Read More