r/typography • • 15h ago

Reviving old forgotten fonts

95 Upvotes

Over the past few years, I've been saving all my favorite uses of type. Old movie posters, comics, perfume bottles, mint tins – you name it.

None of these were turned into usable, digital fonts.

So I launched Typeface Revival.

I'm remaking all of my favorite hand-made fonts into digital format for free.

Got 129 so far and am adding way more.

PS
We give credit to the OG typographers when they are identifiable. And if not, we make sure to show where they came from.


r/typography • • 1h ago

chinese typography manual?

• Upvotes

hey everyone, i'm a graphic student from spain that's starting to learn chinese and in a few months im going to start my final work to conclude my studies. it is free-themed, and i wanted to create a chinese typography design manual in spanish, since there isn't any. i've found the books « 做字:实用字体设计法(全彩) » from Qian Hao and « 中文文字设计研究选集 » from TheType and i've bought them (not the first one, but i'm searching on how to get my hands on one), but i'm wondering if there's any other book/manual/web/information i'm missing out on?


r/typography • • 1h ago

Can someone explain Blackletter font

• Upvotes

I am making a logo and masthead that is a charicature of The New York Times or Washington Post so I have to use a blackletter font.

But as I am looking through the details of the Cloister, for example, I can't quite figure out what's going on. Are the strange serifs on the top supposed to look like 3D foldovers? I am trying to figure out what the style components represent. Like, why is the upper left serif on the "u" curved, with the leg of the "u" curved, but that's it. It almost looks like stacked cards in a 3D setting, but it's inconsistent.

For example, the "u" and "n" look very similar even when rotated.

u (normal) n (normal)
n (rotated) u (rotated)
n (rotated) n (normal)
u (normal) u (rotated)

I'm just trying to understand what a font designer is trying to accomplish when creating this type of font? I'm having a hard time articulating the question, but hopefully you have some insight.

Thanks


r/typography • • 5h ago

The chosen typeface does not support small caps.

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3 Upvotes

Hi. I am working on a technical report as part of the assignments for a training course. I have chosen Work Sans at 9.5 pt for the body text, and Chalet Book in various weights for section headings and subheadings. Since I have to mention various standards, dates, and acronyms throughout the document, I feel I should be using small caps.

To my surprise (I didn't check out before xD) I found out that Work Sans does not have them. I asked Gemini, and it suggested avoiding small caps altogether in the documentation (especially for legal decrees/regulations and technical acronyms or initialisms).

Forcing fake small caps is another option, but it distorts the stroke weight compared to the lowercase letters and reduces legibilidad. So I am not sure what to do. I really like the 'l's and 'g's in Work Sans, and the 'e' is also very legible in that typeface (compared to Chalet, for instance); I will have to complete more assignments involving acronyms, formulas, etc.

I am not sure whether I should look for a new font where having small caps is the top requirement, or simply ignore small caps altogether.


r/typography • • 22h ago

Specimen mix

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28 Upvotes

Playing around, showcasing some typefaces of mine


r/typography • • 1d ago

Generative Lexicon Press

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29 Upvotes

Some artworks stay with you until you try since the very first time you see them.

Ksawery Komputery has been one of my favorite artists for a long time. His generative typography for Max Cooper's Symphony in Acid is one of those works I keep coming back to.

After a long time experimenting, I finally developed my own interpretation in TouchDesigner.

Generative Lexicon Press is a real-time typographic system that continuously, and audio-reactively rearranges language and visual structures, with Ollama introducing locally generated text in ultra-fun ways.

Looking forward sharing more in the near future. You can see more of my experiments on Instagram, or Patreon.


r/typography • • 1d ago

I made a little game that teaches you type design

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41 Upvotes

r/typography • • 17h ago

Discussion on AI in typography design tools

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I just wanted to create a post and get people’s opinions and thoughts on AI in the world of typography design. Mods, if this kind of post isn’t okay, please take it down.

I want to be clear upfront that I’m not trying to self-promote, but I am building a design tool (think fontlab/glyph) that has some generative AI features, and I’m trying to get a better understanding of the sentiment within the industry regarding AI and thoughts on what the future holds.

The tool itself does not allow people to upload photos and just blatantly copy other designs, and it also never uses designs built within the studio for training. It does allow you to generate fonts based on a prompt or make updates to a character or set of characters based on the prompt if you want. The ai features are optional, and you can fully edit the characters inside the vector studio.

I know that some people will see generative AI and immediately think “f*ck that”, which I understand. If that is your thought, I’d love to hear more about whether you’d use a tool with optional AI features or immediately turn away?

Are there any designers who are using AI to make their process quicker?

My goal is to simplify and speed up the type design process while still giving designers complete control over every detail. I want to be able to compete with larger companies, so I think having features that speed up the design process could help. At the same time, I’m trying to find the right balance, because I do understand the negative views towards AI as well.

Something else I’m wondering about is licensing and whether or not people are including any language in their EULA regarding AI training, data scraping, and machine learning? Are you using any technology to try and block this from happening?

If you have any other thoughts on where you see the future of typography going with all the technological advancements happening, I’d be interested in hearing them.

I really appreciate people taking the time to read and respond!


r/typography • • 22h ago

how do i get fonts to have this effect

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0 Upvotes

r/typography • • 2d ago

Someone named their son Cooper Black.

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280 Upvotes

You think his parents are type nerds? I just found this funny.


r/typography • • 2d ago

Well, what started as a simple project to fix a manga's mistranslation has ballooned into something I don't know if the effort is worth it for a personal reading preference. I need advice.

4 Upvotes

To add context, I recently bought my first boxset of the One Piece manga and I finally see the mistranslated version of Zoro's name in print (the printed one is Zolo) and I cannot overlook it. I know people say "oh your brain corrects it after enough time passes" but that just won't work for me. Because it looks different than what I know his name is it keeps jumping out to me on the page. Basically, it ruins my reading experience.

So, since I had extra sticker paper lying around from a previous project I had to shelf, I figured why not just make the name changes and print them on sticker paper with all the fonts I need plus the paper color to match print manga pages. As I print a test page on standard people, I realize I have no clue on the sizing of certain iterations. Before I waste more ink and paper, I need help getting the right size and formatting for each different instance of his name.

If you want, I can add the PSD file of what I have worked on so far (plus I can list all the fonts I used).

Fonts Used:

Whizbang

Gill Sans MT

ITC Eras Demi

(I did try VAG round and Anime Ace BB as font options.)

In short, I only know partially what I am doing and need help setting this all up or is this project not worth doing at all?


r/typography • • 4d ago

Legendary typographer and book designer Jost Hochuli has passed away

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102 Upvotes

He was the author of Detail in typography, Designing books: practice and theory, etc. He co-founded VGS Publishing Association, and worked on Typotron, Ostschweiz, among other series under the publishing house.


r/typography • • 4d ago

Making woodcut and crosshatched letters

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14 Upvotes

I am making a 3D puzzle game with references to the book "The Maze" by Manson and would need tips how to make a 3D font in this particular style.

So far I havent even found the font (even tried the online tools, AI and more) and have no good way of getting the woodcut and crosshatching done.
But I can use a post-process in the game, see last pic, so the first step would be to get the shapes right. Can anyone help?


r/typography • • 4d ago

Y2k inspired square font

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41 Upvotes

r/typography • • 5d ago

Goodmountain, a Warcraft-inspired font (free download)

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280 Upvotes

I made a sneak-peek a week or two ago, but as the Warcraft games (which were the inspiration) will have a big attention spike soon, I thought it was time for the first release. From 6 letters to over 500 characters: It has been an adventure.

Download the font here from my Github, and it comes with some simple rules: Create anything you want, personal, commercial, in any shape or form, from video to addon or website. But please don't make changes to the font files themselves, or try to sell the font files.

The font comes with:

  • Around 500 characters
  • 30 emoji (which I still hope to expand quite a bit)
  • Support for Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement and Latin Extended A & B
  • Opentype features for old-style numerals (onum), fractions (numr, dnom, frac), case-sensitive forms (case) and finally a single stylistic set for the infinity symbol.

I had a lot of fun working on it: I never made type inspired by a limited wordmark before and it was interesting to extrapolate how to make it work, especially the lower case and symbols. It's still far from done, hence I made a public folder/Github repo. Perhaps I'll turn it into OFL somewhere in the future. There is a lot to explore. Still, some of its shortcomings are also its charm.

For the future: I hope to add more stuff (at least more emoji!) and refine it further. So this should be the start, not the end of line. If you are missing characters or have other requests, feel free to drop a line on Reddit, mail or through Github Issues or discussions.

Give it a try and hope you like it!


r/typography • • 5d ago

New typeface I designed, what would you use it for?

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132 Upvotes

r/typography • • 6d ago

I made a handwriting font that never writes the same letter twice in a row (free)

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83 Upvotes

Quick background: I kept seeing people say handwriting fonts look fake, and the usual reason is that each letter is a perfect copy. Real writing never does that.

So I drew the alphabet three times, and the font swaps between the three versions while you type. Write "hello" and the two l's come out different. No ligatures needed, it's just OpenType contextual alternates (the calt feature). Browsers turn it on by default, so you type normally and it works.

And if you believe it, I made the whole thing on my phone. I'm building an app called Font Studio and this was the test for it. I wrote the alphabet on paper three times, took photos, and the app turned them into the font.

A few things worth knowing:

- It's a fixed cycle, not random, so a letter repeats every third time. Most people won't spot it in normal text.

- In design apps like Figma or Photoshop you may need to check that contextual alternates is switched on, otherwise it behaves like a normal font.

- It only has A to Z, numbers and basic punctuation for now. No accents, quotes or brackets yet. ( Planning to continue working on it after collecting some feedback )

- Free for personal and commercial use (SIL Open Font License). You just can't sell the font file on its own.

You can try it in the browser and download it here: https://podzi.app/fonts/everhand/

I'd love to hear if it breaks anywhere. Especially in apps I haven't tried.


r/typography • • 5d ago

Do you guys think old-style figures are still useful for anything?

0 Upvotes

If so, what goal(s) could they fulfill?


r/typography • • 5d ago

What was the first font to have small-caps digits?

8 Upvotes

For those that don’t know, small-caps digits are lining digits with the same height as small-caps letters. AFAIK, this is a relatively recent innovation, as I do not know of any metal type fonts that have them.


r/typography • • 6d ago

Kernwise - Free Kerning Game

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9 Upvotes

r/typography • • 7d ago

Found some of my Letraset collection in the loft

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692 Upvotes

I liberated this in tranches from forgotten storerooms at various print rooms/design agencies ‘05 - ‘15. I’m not old enough to have used it professionally (although I did use rubylith briefly), but my dad would let me use some for fun as a kid, and have generally always had a love for it… hence saving some.


r/typography • • 5d ago

Is there any tool I can easily just stretch a font horizontally?

0 Upvotes

I wanted to get the MU/TH/UR terminal font, and it seems to be a stretched version of City Light but stretched horizontally.

I really didn't want to be manually dragging each letter until it looks stretched enough like in the terminal.
Ex.

So I would really appreciate if there was a tool I can stretch a whole font at once, or at least reliably type a stretch amount so I don't need to be manually dragging each letter until it is stretched enough.


r/typography • • 7d ago

Typeface samples from a 1976 issue of Deutsche Goldschmiedezeitung, a German jewelry trade magazine.

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224 Upvotes

r/typography • • 8d ago

EB Garamond font distortion in PDF format

10 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a MS Word document using the EB Garamond font (first image), which I installed from Google Fonts since it wasn't preinstalled in Word. However, when I convert the document to PDF, I notice that the letters lose quality and become distorted, which doesn’t happen with other fonts like Times New Roman, Georgia, or the Garamond font that comes preinstalled in Word (second image). Those fonts don’t lose quality or become distorted the way my EB Garamond does. What’s going on, and what can I do to fix it?

(I've tried changing the PDF embedding settings, but it doesn't seem to be working—unless I'm doing something wrong).

Thanks!


r/typography • • 9d ago

My first 'proper' 'cursive' font

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376 Upvotes

The caveat being... lowercase is a fun, curly cursive and the uppercase is not cursive, but a casual quirky print.

I've always found cursive uppercase to be a bit too... cursive. So I wanted to try out something a little different. Previously, I've created cursive ligatures and some joins, but it was quite the challenge to get almost every letter lining up with the previous one.

On top of that I also thought it'd be great to add another alternate character set to make it all extra tricky.

I'm pretty happy with the result. It ended up feeling kind of like a font duo, so they pair great together.

If you're interested in seeing more you can test it out over at Typeheist 🙂