PHOTONIA (Pro) - 70s future retro style
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70s style reverse contrast sans with future retro aesthetics, perfect for projects with a vintage sci-fi, space age or computer theme.
This is actually a refurbished and extended version of an older FontStruction I did back in 2019. The original PHOTONIA was a cool looking little work, but didn't quite made the most of its design concept. Inexperience and poor design decisions had led to inconsistencies and other flaws throughout the font. Besides those it also had a small character set that mostly consisted out of the basic Latin block and bare essential symbols & punctuation marks. But imo it still had quite an interresting retro vibe and the potential to be more. So I decided to give the old project some well deserved refreshments.
First I started eliminating the inconsistencies that were present in the older work, than I continued polishing and re-design / modify several characters hoping to create a greater overall unity to the entire piece. Once I was fully satisfied with this renewed improvements it was time to build and expand the character set towards a more complete lingual and typographic support.
➜ ⚠ Previous Version:
▶ Basic Latin only
▶ Minimal kerning
➜ ⚠ What's New Inside:
▶ Additional Latin and accented Latin
▶ Diacritics
▶ Many glyph alternative forms
▶ Additional symbols and punctuation marks
▶ Horizontal box drawing (page deviders)
▶ Typographical symbols
▶ Ornamental printer's characters
▶ 1680 stored kerning pairs
Cheers
This is a cloneFauxhaus — Geometric minimalist modernism sans-serif design
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[INSPIRATION]
As the name already suggests, this indeed was inspired by the Bauhaus-typograpy towards functionality style.
More specifically by Austrian artistic polymath Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental "Universal" alphabet.
The alphabet he designed became somewhat synonymous with the school's identity, and probably is the most well known Bauhaus typeface, and truly epitomizing that typical simplified "Form follows function" Bauhaus-minimalism style. It was also used for the new Bauhaus-building signage.
Some key features in Bayer's original form are those easily recognizable geometric sans-serif letterings, with letter composition based on strong basic geometry, having eliminated all decorative elements of the letterform composition for that crisp industrial, slight mechanical minimalist aesthetic. Bayer's original Universal alphabet also eliminated the need for a upper case letter, further simplifying it towards more of a functionality-driven standardization. Bayer developed multiple revisions and variations of the alphabet. Sadly Universal was never cast as a font, as during that era they weren't manufactured into printing typefaces, and the designs would only exist as drafts (as was the case with all Bauhaus-typefaces). Nonetheless it served as a lettering model for Bauhaus students, colleagues, and followers alike, and they were regularly re-used for signs, book covers and publications by many of its members, but even beyond institution walls the typographic style began to gain a foothold. Throughout the years we have seen a multitude of revivals and other Bauhaus-inspired typeface designs. Some of which that try to be faithful digitizations of the original, whereas others taking a more artistic approach to the style by providing their own personalized reinterpretation of the Bauhaus-aesthetic. So even to this day, many decades later, it repeatedly continues to inspire and influence designers time and again.
Bayer, First a student and later junior master of the printing workshop, was one of Bauhaus’s most influential attendees, advocating the integration of all arts throughout his career. Though not trained as a typographer, he was also assigned with the task of creating a universal visual & typographic identity for the school.—a task Bayer took very serious.Sparking perhaps the most mythic typeface to ever come out of the Bauhaus, which is "Universal"—one that at that time strove to be as idealistic as the school itself
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[THE "FAUXHAUS" FONT]
This is an artistic reinterpretation of Bayer's "Universal" alphabet.
Aiming to preserve the unmistakable style and simplistic geometric stylistic properties of the original, while in the same time allowing a more 'free-form'-approach towards crafting the letterform compositions. This of-course as long as they remains in-line with the stylistic properties of the original. And for the lack of having a better explanation;
—To do sort-of a 'faithfully different' artist depiction of Bayer's original Universal alphabet.
Some notable differences made in Fauxhaus compared to Universal are the re-introduction of a upper case form and the slight de-simplification and inclusion of subtle decorative nuance.
In some cases I've choosen to compose certain specific characters to be more or less identical as to how Bayer originally intended them, whereas others may be entirely different looking. And for some characters have one or more alternative form as well. Some of which are more 'ad hoc'- compositions drawn as we went when new ideas popped up. But others were specifically created to preserve and / -or include certain distinctive and unmistakably identifiable letterforms from Bayer's original Universal alphabet.
Greek & Cyrillic characters included in Fauxhaus were solely added for my personal experimentation purpose only, and they serve 'zero' function as to additional language support of the font.
"Use at your very own risk"— as these could very easily be gone the very next update.
Each letterform was meticulously composed from a random collection of the various memories, which after some thirty Bauhaus-inspired and / -or -revival works including their respective 'shared' research I have accumulated over time for Bauhaus typography like Bayer's work.
No source reference image was used as guidance for creating this FontStruction, everything came straight from the knowledge I gathered from the many previous Bauhaus related projects I did.
So to draw solely from memory alone somewhat a convincing and reasonably similar personal reinterpretation of an original 'Bauhaus' typeface at this stage has gotten pretty easy for me.
For this project in particular I've choosen to construct the letterforms on a medium sized grid, using the linear interpolation 'faux'-Bézier method. So beware that when using this font at very large point size rendering the remnants of this process will become visible!
That's all for now, I hope you like it so far,
Cheers
This is a cloneLEOPOLD PRO (Serif-Regular) — Modern geometric condensed slab-serif
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This font is the second style instance for the newly launched "Leopold Pro" typeface family, and is kicking off this new family of fonts.
The first one came as a minimalist, geometric sans serif style, this second font adds a serif style variation to the family. Both the "sans-regular" and "serif-regular" styles have identical visual properties for size and weight to allow seamless combination of the two, and as the name already suggests, represent the "Regular" style for the family.
Motivation for this was to craft a slab-serif style for the original geometric letterforms that has strong antique mechanistic qualities to add somewhat of a typewriter characteristic.
The relaxed optical proportion, short unbracketed serifs and open spacing results in clean and pleasant to look at text. Largely thanks to these properties it is still relatively legible in terms of a slab-serif style.
The other style can be found here:
LEOPOLD PRO (Sans-Regular)
Two additional extra "Light" and "Bold" weight classess are also currently in development, both remain works in progress for now, but are expected to be included in the future.
I hope y'all like it so far,
Cheers
This is a clone of STF_LEOPOLD Pro (Sans-Regular)Unicase font with a lot of alternates in the lowercase to improve the general playfullness. Also added more diacritics and accents, and remodeled and kerned the old glyphs. (Plus: other "1" at the "t", the 3rd "U" -and their accents- are at the "v", "ò", "ó", "ô" and "ö", respectively.)
This is a clone of zimonart eYe/FSVAN NELLE (Blueprint) — Geometric modernist sans
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☛ THE SOURCE
A re-interpretation of the 1926 geometric sans serif alphabet system reproduction by Jacob Jongert, published in a 1930 sourcebook by N.J. van de Vecht. The geometric uppercase set of the alphabet system is what would later become the famous sans serif capitals which he used for lettering throughout many of his Van Nelle materials.
☛ THE FONTSTRUCTION
Attempt at making a convincing recap of the original alphabet by Jacob Jongert as it was shown in the 1930s sourcebook, and extrapolate that into a full functional font. The decision to go with a small grid sparked a number of limitations in terms of the design freedom that forced some inevitable changes. But the general idea sort of became not to make it a revival, but rather more or less a faithful revision. One that would still be instantly recognizable yet didn't necessarily had to be all about accuracy.
☛ —The small grid design made sure this wasn't happening anyway!
But, for instance, the most striking difference between the two fonts (their weight) in fact is such a byproduct for one of those limitations. Something FS's small grid couldn't properly reproduce, so VAN NELLE (Blueprint) has a slight stronger weight, making the font somewhat of a bold style version of the original. This in addition provided me with slight extra freedom to inplement a little personal touch for further manicure of the font's finer details. Which allowed me to cope with some of the optical clunkiness that come with a fatter face and the grid based design.
Besides these circumstantial differences, which were basically beyond my control, I've also made some intentional changes to make the typeface more practical to use. The changes include things like the significantly lowered ascender height, the slight different width for certain letters, larger tittle (dot above i, j & ij), and several more. despite these changes I believe it very much still reflects what Jongerts once invisioned for the system.
☛ SOME NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CREATOR
Jacob Jongert(1883-1942) was a advertising designer from the Netherlands. After varied studies, including being Roland Holst’s assistant and an acquaintance and colleague of S. H. de Roos [who brought the Arts & Crafts ideas of William Morris to the Netherlands and devoted his career to book design and typography] with whom Jongert experimented with several printing techniques and discovered graphic design as his ideal art form.
¶ In 1923 Jongert rolled in a unique and long-term collaboration with the Van Nelle company, where he became head designer, a position he held until 1940. The Van Nelle company had an extremely modern approach towards advertising (they even commissioned Cassandre to do a poster) and Jongert created for the firm a recognizable image with clear shapes, powerful letters and primary colours, totally Dutch avant-garde in style, and with a strict and rigorous approach directly linked to De Stijl principles. The corporate identity he created has become a milestone in the design world.
¶ The lettering, however, is the driving force that ties it all together. The style is a straightforward set of plain, mono-linear, sans serif capitals in a style that just started to come into fashion in the late 1920s, early 1930s with the rise of functionalism and geometric type design. Yet, while these ideas were already thrown out there, its clever simplicity plus the systematic and cohesive way Jongert implemented his lettering was unusual at the time. The square and minimal construction of the forms allowed the letters to contract and expand to fit any situation, yet maintain a consistent and recognizable appearance throughout the Van Nelle line. ¶ Something we only recently have learned to appreciate is to see his hand crafted system amid the current advancements in variable-font technology, which offers a similar kind of flexibility to typeface designs. A quality that certainly placed him well ahead of its time.
What I particulary like about Jongert's original is the stuff that is going on in the lowercase set of the alphabet, which are those quirky lowercase letter inventions that are different from the more traditional modernist sans, but sadly the lowercase letters were pretty much never used in his works.
I created a simple PDF typeface specimen for those who want to see the high-resolution preview.
PDF SPECIMEN WAS DELETED
Thats all Folks ☚
☛ Cheers
A version of "Western Traintop" with more characters. (Work In Progress.)
fi=Regular $ symbol
This is a clone of Western TraintopJS-PTT 1975 (INLINE) ― Geometric modular typeface system
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Another font addition to the ever evolving and growing collection of revivals and inspired works called LETTERS OP MAAT, a project celebrating and trying to recreate the typographic contributions originally designed by Dutch graphic designer Jurriaan Schrofer. This time I did sort of a revision / recap based on Schrofer's 1975 trichromatic sketches he did for the PTT (TD) the technical department of the Dutch State Company of Post, Telegraphy and Telephony (PTT) that featured a style variation to one of his alphabet systems.
JS-PTT 1975 is a typeface family of three font styles called (SOLID), (INLINE)and (OUTLINE), that seemlessly overlap for combined multi-layer capabilities. Allowing easy multicolor replication similar to the original sketches and more, but also to provide three different isolated forms for individual use as separate fonts.
Now, without diving too deep into the man's biographic profile I do want to point out the following; ―Despite the unprecedented amount his typographic brilliance has contributed, he remains relatively unknown, but certainly no stranger among real typ-o-philes. Schrofer was light years ahead of its time. The level of crafmenship he put into his work was often overshadowed by his mind-blowing experimental, at times even bizarre and psychedelic typographic approach on letterforms, and can easily make one not truly realize the amount of expertise and skill often on display. Therefor he probably remains best known for his extravagant endeavours in book design.
Between 1973-1979 Schrofer worked on a assignement for the Dutch client called PTT (TD) this was during his time with Total Design. For the PTT (TD) Schrofer worked on a big multi project assignement he himself cataloged "Bewegwijzering Girokantoren". This essentially was the design of multiple visual identities for floorplans of 3 office buildings owned by the company. The project gave birth to several new style variation for several of his alphabet systems, one of those was this variation that introduced the rounded corners to some of the letterforms.
This particular recap was based on a alphabet system seen in numerous of sketches Schrofer designed in 1975 for the Dutch ministry of welfare, public health and culture (WVC) department for aesthetic design with the PTT. Part of the technical service at the PTT, responsible for the visual logistics of the company. The PTT, at the time a state-owned multi-utility company providing countless services. All the letters originally provided in Schrofer's sketches are included, I designed all the missing letters plus a couple of alernatives following the original's design parameters. In addition to that I designed and included numerals and some symbols and punctuation marks as well.
During my studies of Schrofer's work I noticed that various alphabet systems reappeared in many of his works. Further research showed that throughout his carreer he seemed to have developed and pre-fabricated multiple alphabet systems, variations and concepts that he constantly reused, refurbished, and recycled over the course of his carreer. Therefor it can be difficult to pin point the exact origins for some of his lettering concepts. Which is something I learned along the way and did not really anticipated for when I innitially started this LETTERS OP MAAT project, so some of my ealier fonts for this project haven't exactly all been properly researched.
For example the lettering concept seen in one of his designs for the PTT (TD) had already appeared two years prior of this PTT materials, when it was used in the 1973 brochure called Grafiek Per Postbode for Galerie 33. This brochure shows the same alphabet system that he later reuses for one of the PTT office builing floorplan designs. The brochure features an outlined variation of that same alphabet system for the text Heading, and a rounded mono-linear variation to this same alphabet system for the Subheading. This mono-linear variation itself had been used in the work for The Beurs van Berlage (Foundation) as well [IMAGE], the Beurs Van Berlage is a Dutch commodity market building located in the centre of Amsterdam. The alphabet system later then got digitalized for implimentation in the Dutch passport, and was acompanied by several additional derivative styles to this mono-linear version of (you can probably guess it) that same alphabet system, including a 5x7 Dot Matrix. Schrofer's design concept for the Dutch passport eventually never got used. And there were several other reapearances of the alphabet with several clients throughout his carreer.
I know it once again is a lot of info to digest, but I want to portray a proper image of the whole story that involves this project as well as it's font contribtions, so I can't help myself here, lol. But I'm pretty certain there are people out there that can appreciate this informative background, so I hope y'all didn't mind it too much.
The full font family could be found here: STF_PTT 1975
Interrested in more of my Jurriaan Schrofer inspired? Please take a look a my complete collection of Fontstructions tagged with STF-LETTERS OP MAATfor the full catalog of fonts I contributed to this project so far.
Cheers
FAKOS VARYTITAS - Futuristic Sci-Fi stencil design
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A Stencil letter with a rather unorthodox form.
The main concept is that of the Sci-Fi / Tech aesthetic. But the asymmetrics in its geometry, various custom build curves and incisions somewhat tune down the mechanical geometric tone of the letterforms, and introducing a slight more humanized touch to its rhythm. These non-traditional attributes making this more of a novel stencil typeface with a strong personality.
The typeface was inspired by space age tech. Its a display style font that is perfect for when your project has to have that typical techy or futuristic aesthetic look. Its best used at large size, but it does work in smaller size format as well.
The font includes:
• uppercase, lowercase & numerals
• accented latin
•diactritics
• symbols & punctuation marks
• ligatures
• some glyph alternatives
• ornamental decorative elements
All "lingual" characters are functional stencils, the only exceptions that aren't stenciled are the ornamental decorative symbols and dingbats.
Cheers
This is a cloneELEVATED (REWORK) - A 3D outline display typeface design with shadow effect.
It's inspired by the lettering from a sketch by great Dutch graphical designer "Jurriaan Schrofer".
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This re-work differs from Jurriaan's original sketch and my previous versions.
I changed the size to grid ratio, drastically reducing overall glyph size and increase stroke weight. The changes are optimizing the design, making it more suitable for digital display use. (more accurate 'print' version forthcoming).
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Due to the inexperience I had in my early days of FontStructing, and the lack of proper knowledge about raster scaling, I faced some serious issues regarding the correct size distribution. This made it impossible to include the diagonal lines correctly into that old version of the font, with the diagonals also having equal seporation and white space throughout the entire design.
So instead of making a clone of my previously published version "STF_ELEVATED" in order to include the shadow style variation into that existing family as a seporate FontStruction (like I did with most other style variations in my "LETTERS OP MAAT" series), for this one I decided to rebuild the entire typeface from scratch.
Putting all the style variations together into this single re-worked design.
Some extra characters were added to the set, making it a slightly more functional basic font.
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The shadow effect is the default style for this font, this also includes all numerals, punctuation marks and other symbols that make up the full font, these occupy the uppercase. The outline style A-Z glyphs occupy the lowercase.
Enjoy!
ARS NOUVEAUX - Art Nouveau inspired display typeface
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A personal digital reimagination of the lettering style by "Charles Rennie Mackintosh" (1868-1928), a pioneer of the "Glasgow School of Art" and so called "Arts & Crafts" movement.
His distinctive style of lettering has been seen many revisions, revivals, reimaginations and inspired designs alike over the years, and has evolved into a broad collection of available fonts.
This basic stylistic lettering concept from Mackintosh sort-of losely funcioned as the structural guiding principle for the creation of "Ars-Nouveaux".
This FontStruction is an experimentation into creating similar flavored, but still unique letterforms within that same design framework.
First I started to layout the overall basic asymmetrical core geometry from a set of custom rectangles, half arc's and slants for each of the letters bare skeleton shape. Once I completed the full set of 36 glyphs [a/z, 0/9] These basic shaped were then further modified into more sophisticated finalized letterforms.
Caps-only, but with many alternates, accompanied by a set of ornate initials.
Hope you like it,
Cheers
This is a cloneOpening day of Marvel's Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse!
Timing has been off as of late, with FontStruct error messages of the server being down, but only for this particular font. Other software has also been uncooperative. But there is a universe where everything went fine and there were no problems, but this isn't that one. Weird things also happened with saving the font, where after saving, it just decided to do a global brick swap. Posting it with glitches and all, and I'll fix it later just because. And I swear I hit the Publish button, but hours later, it still said it was private. Let me try again...
This is a cloneLEOPOLD PRO (Sans-Regular) — Modern geometric condensed sans
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This is a minimalist, geometric sans serif font with medium contrast and a strong compressed look. The modern condensed forms make up an elegant and classy looking font.
The overall design is a mixture of contemporary design with antique inspired elements.
The other style can be found here:
LEOPOLD PRO (Serif-Regular)
Cheers
This is a clone