Hand-made, Hand-drawn, Paper-cut

FF Folk is a small series of typefaces drawn from lettering that artist Ben Shahn used in his paintings and lithographs. The Ben Shahn Folk Alphabet was originally created as lettering in 1940, and in 1995 was produced as digital type by Maurizio Osti and Jane Patterson with the blessing of Mrs. Bernarda Shahn, approval from Ben Shahn’s estate, and under license from VAGA (New York). “Lettering... Read More

The “FF Kisman” package is a collection of five display fonts originally made for various magazines art-directed by Max Kisman: FF Cutout, FF Network, FF Scratch, FF Scratch Outline and FF Vortex. FF Scratch was hand-cut from ulano masking film, and FF Cutout was made with scissors, too. FF Network, like FF Rosetta, was a very early Macintosh font designed for Kisman’s own use. All were... Read More

ITC Matisse was designed by Gregory Gray while he was designing an editorial layout for Madame Figaro, a supplement to the Paris newspaper Figaro. While working on a feature on the work of Henri Matisse, Gray created a typeface with paper and an X-Acto knife, and then scanned the cutouts into a computer. The style of the design comes in part from Gray's passion for African art, with its... Read More

One of Berlin’s must-visit cultural stops is the Prater, a beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg, a district in the eastern part of Berlin. The Prater easily has one of the most unique graphic identities in the city, completely handmade by artist-illustrator Henning Wagenbreth. The alphabets created by Wagenbreth became the starting point for a refreshing type family, FF Prater. To convincingly... Read More

One of Berlin’s must-visit cultural stops is the Prater, a beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg, a district in the eastern part of Berlin. The Prater easily has one of the most unique graphic identities in the city, completely handmade by artist-illustrator Henning Wagenbreth. The alphabets created by Wagenbreth became the starting point for a refreshing type family, FF Prater. To convincingly... Read More

One of Berlin’s must-visit cultural stops is the Prater, a beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg, a district in the eastern part of Berlin. The Prater easily has one of the most unique graphic identities in the city, completely handmade by artist-illustrator Henning Wagenbreth. The alphabets created by Wagenbreth became the starting point for a refreshing type family, FF Prater. To convincingly... Read More

One of Berlin’s must-visit cultural stops is the Prater, a beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg, a district in the eastern part of Berlin. The Prater easily has one of the most unique graphic identities in the city, completely handmade by artist-illustrator Henning Wagenbreth. The alphabets created by Wagenbreth became the starting point for a refreshing type family, FF Prater. To convincingly... Read More

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... Read More

FF Handwriter is a brilliant hand-rendered typewriter design, drawn in monospace. Both FF Handwriter Regular and FF Handwriter Bold capture the feeling of a typewriter, but interpreted through a hand-drawn lens. There is a companion pictogram font: FF Handwriter Symbols. The series is from Berlin-based designer Alessio Leonardi, who says this about his type creation: “FF Handwriter is the only... Read More

Regarding his type creation, Alessio Leonardi had this to say: “FF Matto is a really classic typeface with all the letters you need to write all the things you mean. If it looks irregular it’s only because the computer is less perfect than my right hand. Matto means crazy in Italian.” What he fails to mention is that porco means pig in Italian, and such is the name of the extra sets for the... Read More

FF Priska Serif is a fun font with three styles. The star is the Little Creatures design, of which each character is an assemblage of animal and human forms. The Book of Genesis should be reset, in FF Priska Serif Little Creatures!

Linotype Cutter was designed by Georg John in 1997. As the name suggests, the font looks like it was cut out of black cardboard pieces. Each letter has a irregular rectangle black background and they combine to form heavy rows of letter elements. The strong contrasts of the font make it good for short headlines or initials in larger point sizes and combines well with almost any text font.... Read More

According to Fabrizio Schiavi FF Steel is a whole family of typefaces that arose from a study completed in April of 1993 about type and its application in context. “In this study I tried to create a script that was compatible with a context of techno music. Originally I used a wasted brush and a strong sheet of paper to obtain very incised, trash-like lines. FF Steel String and FF Steel Mix... Read More

The techno sound of the 1990s, a personal computer, font creation software, and some inspiration all came together to inspire the F2F (Face2Face) font series. Alessio Leonardi and his friends had the demand to create new unusual typefaces, which would be used in the leading German techno magazine of the day, Frontpage. Even typeset as small as 6-points, in nearly undecipherable layouts, it was... Read More

ITC Klepto is the work of British designer Phill Grimshaw, and true to its name, it 'stole' its look from a series of 22 headlines which Grimshaw once created for an ad campaign. It is an eclectic, rough-edged sans serif in the style of the 1950s. ITC Klepto can also be enhanced by drop shadows, color gradation and distortions, which, when applied, recreate the effects seen in the horror... Read More

Alessio Leonardi said: “I love the FF Letterine Archetipetti (little archetypes) and I think they love me too. I invented FF Letterine in order to be able to communicate with those tiny creatures. We send each other letters with the modem. They don’t have ISDN and neither do I. Archetipetti are really polite and politically correct, even if they sometimes don’t look so. FF Letterine Esagerate... Read More

Coriander is the work of British designer Timothy Donaldson. It started out as a doodle one afternoon Donaldson was bored and uninspired. He wrote the word "Coriander" and was then distracted by the sun beating through an adjacent window. He taped the writing paper up on the window as a shade. He took it down a few months later, folded it up, and stuck it in his pocket. When the piece of paper... Read More

London designer John Critchley worked with illustrator Darren Raven to design a type family based on Darren’s spontaneous, symbolic, comic-like illustrations. The resulting design, FF Bokka, has four variations: Solid, Outline, Half Shadow and Shadow. These versions can be layered and matched with no less than a full set of illustrations from its Drawings style. Fun for all ages!

This typeface is a reaction against the geometrical brutality of many of today’s typefaces. Designer Peter Warren challenged traditional conventions of typeface design by adopting policies which included non-adherence to the baseline, the x-height, and the division between upper and lower case. As far as possible he retained his goal to give FF Amoeba no sharp corners or straight lines. Above... Read More

Linotype Cool Wool is part of the TakeType Library, featuring winners of Linotype's International Digital Type Design Contest. This font was designed by A. Leonardi and P. Wollein, who took their inspiration from clothing labels and care instructions. Cool Wool is designed to look like it was stitched, a style of typeface which goes back to the hand embroidery of the time of Biedermeier. ... Read More

FF Scribble draws inspiration from hand-drawn layouts of the hot metal and photocomposition eras. The font has an important message: make a sketch of what you want to create before touching the computer. Often what you’ve drawn is better than the computer’s results.