Finlay Spears

A type designed in a grid, like on display panels

Type is not only printed. There were always and still are a number of forms of type versions which function completely differently. Even very early in the history of script there were attempts to combine a few single elements into the diverse forms of individual characters and also efforts to construct the forms of letters within a geometric grid system. The “instructions” of Albrecht Dürer are probably most well-known.

But although designers of past centuries assumed the ideal to basically be an artist’s handwritten script, the idea which developed in the course of mechanization was to “build” characters in a building block system only by stringing together one basic element — the so-called grid type was discovered, represented most commonly today by »pixel types.« But even before computers, there were display systems which presented types with the help of a mechanical grid display, like the display panels in public transportation (bus, train) or at airports and train stations.

In a streetcar, I met up with a modern variation of this display which reveals the name of each tram stop as it is approached. This system was based on a customary coarse square grid, but the individual squares were also divided again diagonally in four triangles.

In this way it is possible to display slants and to simulate round forms more accurately as with only squares. The displayed characters still aren’t comparable to a decent typeface — on the contrary, the lower case letters are surprisingly ugly — but they form a much more legible type than that of ordinary [quadrate] grid types.

DeDisplay from ingoFonts is this kind of type, constructed from tiny triangles which are in turn grouped in small squares. The stem widths are formed by two squares; the height of upper case characters is 10, the x-height 7 squares.

DeDisplay is available in three versions: DeDisplay 1 is the complex original with spaces between the triangles, DeDisplay 2 forgoes dividing the triangles and thus appears somewhat darker or “bold,” and DeDisplay 3 is to some extent the “black” and doesn’t even include spaces between the individual squares.

Hologram is a font inspired by a combination of the future and the past. The intention was to design a font that was most effective when applied to Largely Displayed text like Headings, rather than for smaller extended bodies of text.

There are 3 distinctive styles offered in the Hologram font family. Each style contains over 350+ Glyphs per style with support for up to 26 Languages as well as specialised kerning & spacing.

• Display Sans: This style is the cleanest of the 3 fonts. There are no serifs attached to the ends of the strokes, although the stroke weight is varied from thick to thin depending on the letters.
• Display Serif: This style contains modern serifs at the ends of most character strokes that give more structure to the shapes. A majority of the serifs are horizontal in direction with few characters containing vertical serif details.
• Display Wedge: The most Bold of all is the Wedge Serif style offered. Featuring thick and thin triangular serifs at the ends of character strokes. This style is most effective in Large Displays & Titling uses.

Designed by KAZER STUDIO

Brillia is a sweet modern calligraphy, soft hand-lettered handwritten font. Fall in love with its authentic feel and use it to create gorgeous wedding invitations, beautiful stationary art, eye-catching social media posts, and cute greeting cards.

"Engin" is a sharp and futuristic font. It has rigid structures and broken forms. It's a font that will be used in 2132. Wide shapes and non-standard patterns create a strong image and texture of the text.

Engin supports Basic Latin and Extended Latin, Cyrillic — in total about 90 languages are supported.

The font has one Regular weight, all uppercase. Engin font was designed by Viktor Pesotsky.

Andora Ardelion is a stylish and elegant new calligraphy font, suitable for designs that need both a touch of elegance and modernity. This font has a lot of swashes that can help anchor your projects in ornamental glamour.

A very expanded sans serif font in capital letters inspired by the inscription on a bank note

Old bank notes tend to have a very typical typography. Usually they carry decorative and elaborately designed markings. For one thing, they must be practically impossible to forge and for another, they should make a respectable and legitimate impression. And in the days of copper and steel engravings, that meant nothing less than creating ornate, shaded or otherwise complicated scripts. Designing the appropriate script was literally in the hands of the engraver.

That’s why I noticed this bank note from 1948. It is the first 20 mark bill in the then newly created currency ”Deutsche Mark.“ All other bank notes of the 1948 series show daintier forms of typography with an obvious tendency toward modern face. The 1949 series which followed shortly thereafter reveals the more complicated script as well. For whatever reason, only this 20 mark bill displays this extremely expanded sans serif variation of the otherwise Roman form applied. This peculiarity led me in the year 2010 to create a complete font from the single word ”Banknote.“

Back to those days in the 40’s, the initial edition of DM bank notes was carried out by a special US-American printer who was under pressure of completing on time and whose engravers not only engraved but also designed. So that’s why the bank notes resemble dollars and don’t even look like European currency. That also explains some of the uniquely designed characters when looked at in detail. Especially the almost serif type form on the letters C, G, S and Z, but also L and T owe their look to the ”American touch.“

The ingoFont Banknote 1948 comprises all characters of the Latin typeface according to ISO 8859 for all European languages including Turkish and Baltic languages.

In order to maintain the character of the original, the ”creation“ of lower case letters was waived. This factor doesn’t contribute to legibility, but this kind of type is not intended for long texts anyway; rather, it unfolds its entire attraction when used as a display font, for example on posters.

Banknote 1948 is also very suitable for distortion and other alien techniques, without too much harm being done to the characteristic forms.

With Banknote 1948 ingoFonts discloses a font like scripts which were used in advertising of the 1940’s and 50’s and were popular around the world. But even today the use of this kind of font can be expedient, especially considering how Banknote 1948, for its time of origin, impresses with amazingly modern detail.