News

New Fonts: Akhand Soft and Graphico

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 13:13:53 +0100

This month, the Indian Type Foundry is pleased to publish two new sans serif families for the Latin script. The first, Akhand Soft, is an extension to our popular Akhand series. Graphico, on the other hand, is a totally new design. Both families are display faces. Akhand Soft has the additional benefit of being usable sparingly in running text, while Graphico is a great choice for headlines. These could be headlines set online, embedded in an app, or put into traditional print. In terms of areas for best application, Akhand Soft is fine-tooled for use in corporate identity design, editorial design, and even signage systems.

Graphico would even look great printed or etched into physical products. While Graphico’s design is quite extended, Akhand Soft’s letterforms are condensed. Although the two typefaces don’t look much alike, they share much in common. Both are drawn in mono-linear styles, and many of Akhand Soft’s letters are straight-sided (as are virtually all of Graphico’s).

Graphico’s appearance is very wide. Its letterforms are industrial-looking; this feeling is enhanced by its characters’ square-sides. The typeface looks like the product of precision mechanics. It should be featured together with tech – either old tech like appliances or watches, or new tech like apps and laptop stands. The Graphico family offers six styles, ranging in weight from light to black. The black is really nice and chunky, and can easily be used as a stand-alone design. Each Graphico font includes 386 glyphs, and in terms of proportion, the Graphico design features short ascenders. While the descenders are not actually very long either, they look as if they might be – an interesting optical illusion. The fonts’ numerals are proportional lining figures.

All of the corners of Akhand Soft’s characters have been rounded. This makes Akhand Soft a much more friendly and informal variant to the Akhand Latin family. Despite its having straight sides, not every aspect of Akhand Soft’s design is constructed. The curves in its modules, for instance, have all been optically corrected, removing the mechanical nature that could otherwise become too dominant. Akhand Soft’s modularity extends beyond the formal level, too: its design is systematic – not just regarding the number of languages and writing systems it supports, but also concerning the family’s weight compliments. Akhand Soft’s broad range of weights – eight weights, to be exact – makes combinations with a strong degree of contrast possible; the lightest and the heaviest styles may be mixed together to create powerful effects in your designs. Each font in the the family includes 390 glyphs.

Akhand Soft is part of ITF’s Akhand super family, a series of compact monolinear fonts that currently supporting the Bengali, Devanagari, Latin, Malayalam and Tamil scripts. While the shapes used in each of the Akhand subfamilies are script-specific, they all share a similar dynamic. Elements that are typically full and sweeping have been made compact, and their verticals have been flattened. This ‘straightening out’ gives text set in the typefaces a streamlined look. The Akhand typefaces’ modular forms bear a strong commonality to each other, without strings of characters becoming repetitive in text.

Like the Akhand family on which it is based, Akhand Soft was designed by Satya Rajpurohit in Ahmedabad. Graphico is a collaborative work created by a trio of Paris-based designers: Alisa Nowak, Julie Soudanne, and Jean-Baptiste Morizot.

→ Download Graphico PDF specimen.
→ Download Akhand Soft PDF specimen.
→ Try Graphico and Akhand Soft on Fontstand.

Two new decorative sans serif typefaces from France: Meet Bobo and Eileen

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:59:36 +0100

The Indian Type Foundry is very pleased to announce the publication of its two newest display typefaces, Eileen and Bobo. Both selections come to us from French type designers. Each is a refreshingly decorative interpretation of the geometric sans serif genre. Eileen is an art-deco-style typeface with five weights. Bobo is a single-weight family, but it contains quite a bit of variation within just one font file. In terms of style, Bobo is rather cutting-edge and contemporary, rooted in the “twenty-one-teens,” whereas Eileen references the nineteen-twenties. You might call Bobo a “hipster font;” we call it an exciting addition to your typographic palette.

In its design language, Eileen mixes two popular sans serif styles from the 1920s: its capital letters are art deco, while the lowercase is geometric. The lowercase letters also include a number of constructed features: the “a” and “g” are both single-storey, while the bottoms of “t” and “y” have each been straightened out. The cedilla takes the form of a simple vertical stroke, too. Pointy apexes on the bottoms of “v” and “w” reference the uppercase letters. Each font contains alternate forms of “ C,” “G,” “J” and “S.” The default “C” and “G” are full, round letters; they are almost as wide as the “O.” The alternate “C” and “G” variants are narrow and more decorative; their forms are half-circular, and they appear to be only half as wide as the “O.” The alternate “J” is a narrower, longer form of that letter, with a descender; the standard “J” has no descender, and a top serif. The alternate “S” has a streamlined diagonal form. Some of the non-alphabetic characters are unique, such as the narrow dollar and rupee currency symbols, as well as the brave ampersand and reductionist section mark.

Although Bobo is a just a single uppercase-only font, it contains a lot of variety. There are three complete sets of capitals: one is mapped to the font’s uppercase letters, one to the lowercase letters, and one as a stylistic set for uppecase under SS01. Along with even more dynamic versions of the numerals (0–9), these alternate glyphs are stored in a Stylistic Set – accessible via an OpenType feature. Bobo is a study in geometric-ornamented variation: some of the typeface’s letterforms have strokes that have been doubled, while others are missing typical elements (repetition is a key feature of Bobo’s design). Other letterforms are mirrored. Some arrive at unicase solutions, while others still have been made quite narrow. The design even included several “jewelled” letterforms, with circles in their centers, which are reminiscent both of medieval illuminated manuscript lettering and French ornamented typefaces from the eighteenth century. Bobo features non-alphabetic characters that also match with each other, such as the ampersand and at-symbol, which feature a similar flat top to the “3.” The rest of the numerals are just as decorative as the letters; the “2” has a closed-form top that matches the “6” and the “9.” The typeface’s .notdef is a skull – a particularly wicked-looking one at that!

Eileen is named after the Irish furniture designer Eileen Gray (1878–1976). Her most-iconic design is circular glass table from the 1920s, which made use of curved steel tubing. She was a pioneering Modernist, and this typeface is a fitting typographic tribute to her work. The name Bobo refers to individuals who incorporate values of both 1960s counterculture and 1980s materialism; Bobo stands for “BOurgeois BOhemian.” Eileen and Bobo are the second ITF releases of their respective designers. Eileen is from Julie Soudanne, and Bobo is from Jean-Baptiste Morizot. Each are based in Paris, France. They worked together with Alisa Nowak to design the Graphico family, which we released just a few weeks ago.

Two new decorative sans serif typefaces from France: Meet Bobo and Eileen

Although Bobo is a just a single uppercase-only font, it contains a lot of variety. There are two complete sets of capitals: one is mapped to the font’s uppercase letters, the other to the lowercase. Plus, there is an additional range of 16 more-extravagant alternate-form caps (A B C E F G I K M N R T V X and two different “S”-forms); all of these letters’ accented variants exist in multiple variants, too. Along with even more dynamic versions of the numerals (0–9), these alternate glyphs are stored in a Stylistic Set – accessible via an OpenType feature. Bobo is a study in geometric-ornamented variation: some of the typeface’s letterforms have strokes that have been doubled, while others are missing typical elements (repetition is a key feature of Bobo’s design). Other letterforms are mirrored. Some arrive at unicase solutions, while others still have been made quite narrow. The design even included several “jewelled” letterforms, with circles in their centers, which are reminiscent both of medieval illuminated manuscript lettering and French ornamented typefaces from the eighteenth century. Bobo features non-alphabetic characters that also match with each other, such as the ampersand and at-symbol, which feature a similar flat top to the “3.” The rest of the numerals are just as decorative as the letters; the “2” has a closed-form top that matches the “6” and the “9.” The typeface’s .notdef is a skull – a particularly wicked-looking one at that!

Eileen is named after the Irish furniture designer Eileen Gray (1878–1976). Her most-iconic design is circular glass table from the 1920s, which made use of curved steel tubing. She was a pioneering Modernist, and this typeface is a fitting typographic tribute to her work. The name Bobo refers to individuals who incorporate values of both 1960s counterculture and 1980s materialism; Bobo stands for “bourgeois Bohemian.” Eileen and Bobo are the second ITF releases of their respective designers. Eileen is from Julie Soudanne, and Bobo is from Jean-Baptiste Morizot. Each are based in Paris, France. They worked together with Alisa Nowak to design the Graphico family, which we released just a few weeks ago.

→ Download Bobo PDF specimen.
→ Download Eileen PDF specimen.
→ Try Bobo and Eileen on Fontstand.

One font for café menus, another for the book you read while you drink your coffee: Introducing Abelard and Blonde Script

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 11:00:19 +0200

One font for café menus, another for the book you read while you drink your coffee: Introducing Abelard and Blonde Script

This week, the Indian Type Foundry brings two very different typefaces to your attention. The first, Abelard, is a Latin-script serif family for setting long passages of text. It was especially designed with eReaders in mind. The second, Blonde Script, is a casual, sign-painter-stlye script face. It includes a whole lot of swashes and alternates.

Abelard focuses on functionality. It’s a modern (or neoclassical) family, with 10 styles. The weights range from Light to ExtraBold, and each has a companion italic. Abelard was designed by Barbara Bigosińska, a Polish designer living in the Netherlands. Bigosińska is a graduate of the MA type]media course at the Royal Academy in The Hague (KABK), where she learned mastery of broad-nib and pointed-pen writing styles. Abelard’s contrast model is vertical, like most other neoclassical-style typefaces. Its letterforms are based on pointed-pen models. With Abelard, Bigosińska has created a contemporary response to neoclassical types like Baskerville, Bulmer, and Scotch Roman.

Bigosińska optimised Abelard for use in printed text and eText. The typeface features several elements which ensure that text set with it maintains even color, no matter what rendering conditions arise. These features include case-sensitive punctuation, which may be activated via the OpenType <case> feature. This substitutes 36 glyphs with variants whose forms are suited to all-caps settings. However, all of the punctuation, whether it is optimised for upper or lowercase text, is prominent. Abelard does not tolerate shy punctuation marks! Each Abelard font also includes 13 separate f-ligatures, and a set of eight ornaments that resemble pen nibs, bullet points, or arrows. Abelard is equipped with four sets of figures, too (oldstyle and lining figures in both proportional and tabular variants).

Since Abelard’s capitals are designed with neoclassical proportions; most of them appear to have similar widths. The fonts’ lowercase letters feature open apertures, a moderate x-height, and mild stroke-contrast. Abelard’s ball terminals are another hallmark neoclassical element. The design’s lowercase ‘f’ and ‘r’ are narrow, in order to prevent their creating holes in words. All of these characteristics help give text set in Abelard a relaxed and even appearance. While Abelard’s roman styles are elegant and sober, the italics are more flamboyant – just look at the lowercase ‘y’ in each italic font. Abelard’s italics are slightly narrower than the romans, and they’re lighter in weight, which increases their ability to offer clear differentiation in text. The italic ‘v’, ‘w’, and ‘y’ each have their right arm curved, which improves their spacing.

Bigosińska’s Abelard typeface shares its name with Peter Abelard (1079–1142), a medieval French philosopher and theologian. His tragic affair with Héloïse d’Argenteuil – and their subsequent, life-long correspondence with one another – remain one of the most enduring true-life love stories from the Middle Ages. The two lovers are remembered with a nineteenth-century monument in Paris’s fabled Père Lachaise Cemetery. Like Peter Abelard, Bigosińska’s typeface is resolute, noble and strong, with a deep-minded passion for books and philosophy. Abelard is Bigosińska’s second serious type family to date, and her debut release with ITF. Previously, she designed Mala, her first full typeface family, at type]media in 2013.

Text set in Blonde Script, with its normal setting, maintains a rather even baseline. However, as soon as Stylistic Set 1 or 2 are activated, the letters begin to dance above and below the baseline. The movement of text along the line becomes fluider and even more informal. Blonde Script contains a broad variety of contextual alternates, so be sure to activate that feature in Illustrator, InDesign, or PhotoShop when using the font! Additionally, Blonde Script includes other substitutions available via OpenType features, such as Swash Letters and Small Caps (Small Caps are a quite unusual bonus in a script typeface). The font includes three kinds of figures: lining figures, oldstyle figures, and small cap figures, too.

Blonde Script was designed by Nikola Giacintová, a Czech designer. This is her second commercial release, and her debut typeface with ITF. Her first typeface was Rukola, which was part of the “Bestsellers” project that took place at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague a few years ago.

Abelard focuses on functionality. It’s a modern (or neoclassical) family, with 12 styles. The weights range from Light to ExtraBold, and each has a companion italic. Abelard was designed by Barbara Bigosińska, a Polish designer living in the Netherlands. Bigosińska is a graduate of the MA type]media course at the Royal Academy in The Hague (KABK), where she learned mastery of broad-nib and pointed-pen writing styles. Abelard’s contrast model is vertical, like most other neoclassical-style typefaces. Its letterforms are based on pointed-pen models. With Abelard, Bigosińska has created a contemporary response to neoclassical types like Baskerville, Bulmer, and Scotch Roman.

Blonde Script is a single-style typeface full of stylistic alternates. The font has 815 glyphs in total. Aside from the alternate letterforms, there are 25 ligatures, plus special glyphs for price tags; logotypes for words like ‘for’, ‘of’, ‘the’, and ‘with’; and even a hand-written heart symbol. Blonde Script’s design looks like the kind of informal brush lettering written by sign painters, especially American sign painters in the twentieth century. Today, this kind of lettering is often used for signage in cafés and restaurants: on large boards, menus, placards, and other point of sale advertisements.

Text set in Blonde Script, with its normal setting, maintains a rather even baseline. However, as soon as Stylistic Set 1 or 2 are activated, the letters begin to dance above and below the baseline. The movement of text along the line becomes fluider and even more informal. Blonde Script contains a broad variety of contextual alternates, so be sure to activate that feature in Illustrator, InDesign, or PhotoShop when using the font! Additionally, Blonde Script includes other substitutions available via OpenType features, such as Swash Letters and Small Caps (Small Caps are a quite unusual bonus in a script typeface). The font includes three kinds of figures: lining figures, oldstyle figures, and small cap figures, too.

New Fonts: Volkart and Weissenhof Grotesk

Thu, 05 Nov 2015 11:06:25 +0100

The Indian Type Foundry’s releases for this November include two new German-style sans serif families: Volkart and Weissenhof Grotesk. Each of these typefaces interprets a different chapter in design history. Sans serifs are the face of 21st century communication, but they only came onto the scene relatively recently. English type founders published the first sans serifs almost 200 years ago; by the end of the 19th century, German foundries had developed the most-popular designs for jobbing printing. These are the types we call “grotesks” in English; in German that is just another word for “sans serif.” While more revolutionary sans styles appeared during the 1920s, the pioneers of international graphic design went back to the earlier grotesk style of the 1890s. Since the 1950s, graphic design without this neo-grotesk style of type has been unthinkable. Although Volkart does not have the word “grotesk” in its name, it is the neo-grotesk of this month’s two releases. Weissenhof Grotesk is based on one of those “other” revolutionary styles implied above.

Both typefaces Volkart and Weissenhof Grotesk are all-purpose Corporate Design tools. Volkart has 18 styles; these include nine weights, each of which have italics: Hairline, Thin, Extralight, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extrabold, and Black. Weissenhof Grotesk is an eight member family: its Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold weights each come in upright and italic variants, too. Volkart and Weissenhof Grotesk’s fonts include 385-glyph character sets supporting all common European languages that are written with the Latin script.

While Volkart might resemble earlier typefaces, it is a new design that has been made for our time. Volkart has the look of a classic; it is the first neo-grotesk you should consider for your next re-branding project. Even if your studio already has its own favourite neo-grotesk, we encourage you to reconsider your font stacks. Volkart was conceived for screen and print-use simultaneously, from the moment the very first letters were drawn. What are some of Volkart’s neo-grotesk design features? For starters, the family appears quite monolinear. Stroke terminals end in either horizontal or vertical cuts, instead of diagonals. The capital letters are quite similar to one-another, in terms of their relative widths; these are modernist/industrial proportions, not old-fashioned Roman capitals. Volkart’s lowercase letters have a very high x-height, and most of the letters are round. The apertures are small and the letters’ counter forms are closed. The shapes of the diacritics are minimalist – their forms are almost geometric. The italic fonts are corrected-obliques, not cursive-style type.

Almost all of the above-mentioned features could also be used to describe Weissenhof Grotesk, too. Why is it that Weissenhof Grotesk, then, looks so different from Volkart? Weissenhof Grotesk is a family inspired by an ideal, rather than a specific style of typefaces. Its name pays tribute to the architecture of the Weissenhofsiedlung, or Weissenhof Estate. This ensemble, built in 1927, was the most significant architectural achievement of the Weimar Republic era. Almost every modern architect of the period was involved, including Peter Behrens, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. Refreshingly, Weissenhof Grotesk is not a pastiche of Bauhaus-inspired letterforms; its designers do not rely on that kind of stylistic shorthand. If anything, the typeface is similar to the style of DIN-lettering initially used on railway cars and engineering plans. The corners of Weissenhof Grotesk’s stroke endings are rounded-off, but this is not a “rounded” typeface. Its letterforms actually take inspiration from common architectural features; such as curves combining with straight segments. A straight-sided “o”, for instance, acts as a pattern for many other letters, sich as the b c d e p and q. Weissenhof Grotesk features monolinear strokes and a good amount of contrast between the stroke thickness of each weight. Letter proportions tend toward equalisation, without Weissenhof Grotesk becoming a monospaced design. Even the typeface’s numerals, surprisingly, are proportionally-spaced.

Two Stuttgart-based designers – Stefanie Schwartz and Dirk Wachowiak – developed Weissenhof Grotesk for ITF, while the Paris-based Jérémie Hornus is behind Volkart. Volkart is his second ITF release; together with Clara Julien and Alisa Nowak, he designed the Diodrum family that we published earlier in 2015. Hornus’s Volkart typeface is our largest family of Latin-script fonts to date. For the name, it is inspired from the Volkart Trading Company. This was the first multi-national enterprise with both Indian and Swiss operations. Their Bombay office opened in 1851, and the firm played an important role in fostering early ties between the two countries. While the neo-grotesk style didn’t originate in Switzerland per se, some of the most-famous neo-grotesks do come from Swiss designers.

Download the PDF specimens for Volkart & Weissehnof Grotesk

Introducing Trench Sans, Rounded and Slab: A new superfamily for Micro text and Macro display

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 09:44:25 +0100

The Indian Type Foundry’s Trench superfamily is the third release by Shiva Nallaperumal in less than a year. Each new typeface by Shiva is bigger than the last; while Pancho had five weights, and Khang six, the Trench superfamily offers its users 15 fonts. There are three subfamilies of five styles each: Trench Sans has been optimized for use in very, very small point sizes. Trench Rounded and Trench Slab, on the other hand, are each intended for display use. All three entries in the Trench series can be used to set general purpose texts meant for reading, too.

Shiva has long been fascinated by agate typefaces, or fonts specially designed for the smallest texts in newspapers and other things printed in poor conditions. An “agate” in-and-of-itself is a a unit of typographical measure 5.5 points high (about 1/14 of an inch). Many agate types feature “ink-traps” as part of their design. These are little wells in corners where ink would otherwise clog-up and make the printing appear too dark. Ink-traps are just one of many size-specific adjustments made to agate types; they often have wider letterspacing, too. The most famous typeface in the agate genre is Bell Centennial, designed by Matthew Carter for use in American telephone books during the 1970s. It is commonly used today in much larger sizes by graphic designers all over the world – you might recognize its exaggerated ink-traps. Christian Schwartz’s Amplitude – designed about 15 years ago – makes use of sharper, razor-cut ink-traps in its design.

Shiva's process for Trench Sans started in a similar vein, but with a different source: there is a popular news magazine in India that uses an agate face, with pronounced ink-traps, on glossy paper in a not-so-small size. This was definitely not a conscious design choiceand after seeing this odd, condensed ink-trap-filled typeface being used in medium sizes, Shiva felt there was potential to use ink-traps outside of their functional uses. The idea for his next typeface was planted. He began experimenting with ink-traps as a stylistic feature in various pieces of lettering that he made while he was graduate student in graphic design at MICA in Baltimore. ITF’s Satya Rajpurohit suggested that he take these ideas more seriously, and come up with a working typeface that still retained something of their original concept. More research into fonts for small sizes led him to understand and incorporate several functional aspects into his design: compact letter shapes, open counters, appropriate spacing, short descenders to accommodate for tighter text-setting, etc. Just adding ink-traps everywhere doesn’t make for a good micro face. The result of this hard work is Trench Sans, a five-style family of agate fonts that work well in 5–10 pt size.

All the Trench fonts have tabular setting for all numerals and numeric symbols as the default feature. This means that the numerals and symbols have the same letter widths among all weights. This is particularly useful for setting tables and numeric data of any kind.

Trench Sans is accompanied by two display-typography siblings: Trench Rounded and Trench Slab. Trench Rounded is a rounded-sans take on Trench Sans, for use in larger point sizes. As its name implies, Trench Slab is the Trench series’s slab serif version. Each of the Trench Rounded, Trench Sans, and Trench Slab fonts include 436 glyphs. There are a number of alternates included in each font. The standard form of the capital “I” in all fonts has serifs; the “a” is two-storied and the “g” is single-storied. Over stylistic sets, users can access a capital “I” without serifs, a double-storied “g”, and alternate forms of “M”, “N”, “W”, and “w” that are especially designed for display uses.

In spirit, Trench Rounded was inspired by one of Shiva's favorite pieces from graphic design history: Wim Crouwel’s exhibition poster for the sculptor Claes Oldenburg. Its letterforms featured huge, rounded, cushion-like letterforms. They had distinct ink-traps, too – but in this sense, they gave the letters enough depth to echo the softness in Oldenburg’s sculpture. Trench Slab’s origin was much more whimsical. Taking a break from the main work on Trench Sans, Shiva added slab serifs to the “H”. Right then and there, he saw that Trench Sans had the potential to turn into his biggest family yet.

→ Download Trench PDF specimen.
→ Try Trench Sans, Rounded & Slab on Fontstand.

A monospace family, formal handwriting, and a lovable wide family: Introducing Tabular, Spencerio, and Quantum Rounded

Sun, 10 Apr 2016 13:52:10 +0200

This April, the Indian Type Foundry is pleased to announce the release of three very different Latin-script typefaces: Tabular, Spencerio, and Quantum Rounded. The names of each of these give hints about their designs; Tabular is a family of monospace sans serif fonts, while Spencerio is a formal, Spencerian-script face. Quantum Rounded is an addition to our Quantum Multi-Script series, first released in 2015. Tabular and Spencerio were both developed by the Paris-based designer duo of Jeremie Hornus and Julie Soudanne, while Quantum Rounded is another great typeface from Hitesh Malaviya in India.

As a family, Tabular includes ten fonts. Five are uprights, and each of these weights has a companion italic. All of the glyphs in the family share the same advance width – 600 em units – which means that your line-wrap will not affected when part of a text becomes emboldened or italicised. Tabular’s advance width is slightly compact for monospace fonts; especially in the heavier weights, the stylistic play between extended narrow letters and compressed wide letters is therefor very intriguing. Great attention has been paid to the details of characters that some might view as being ‘less important,’ and it is here that Tabular really shines. For example, Tabular’s fractions are stacked. Special characters, like the percent sign, the at symbol, and currency symbols, are drawn in innovative ways.

We recommend Tabular for onscreen-use in apps or website for displaying code, and in print for areas where monospace fonts are essential (such as financial reporting). Tabular would also be a noteworthy in print designs including lots of numerals, such as letterheads that juggle multiple telephone numbers.

While Tabular is a ten-font family, Spencerio is a single-style script face. The typeface’s letterforms are inspired by the popular Spencerian calligraphic style. Spencerian letters, which are written at a slant (or slope), are formed with a pointed pen. The natural state of each stroke is a thin hairline; but when the calligrapher wants to create a thicker line in order to add contrast, all that she need do is to add pressure to the nib at the right point of the stroke. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it takes years of practice for calligraphers to master the Spencerian style! Most graphic designers prefer to apply a typeface instead. Spencerian uppercase letters are characterised by their peculiar ornateness, and Spencerio does not fail to deliver here. Almost all capital letters include multiple loops (some of which are open, while others are blind counters), swells, and swirls. Some letters have additional detail – such as ‘A’ or ‘K’ – and others have long, descending swash elements. Particularly the out-strokes of the ‘L’ and ‘Q’ can be used to create powerful word shapes.

Spencerio may be the best typeface yet in the ITF library for the creation of unique monograms, but it is really an excellent choice for any design application calling for a formal script. This could be a calling card, certificate, diploma, invitation, or anything associated with a wedding. Spencerio’s character set includes 673 glyphs, or almost double the amount necessary to transcribe text in all commonly-spoken European languages written with the Latin script. The approximately 300 ‘extra’ glyphs in Spencerio include ligatures and alternate forms, particularly initial and final letterforms, which may be accessed simply by activating the Standard Ligatures feature in most layout apps. Many of Spencerio’s special characters – such as mathematical symbols, computer coding characters, and commercial symbols like copyright registered, or trademark – are ‘written’ entirely with hairlines and exhibit no stroke-contrast. This way, they fall into the background of the text, and do not distract from the essential message.

For over a decade, fonts with rounded terminals have signified friendliness. Corporations around the world use them when they want to suggest an internal openness towards their customers. In some ways, Quantum Rounded is the opposite of a formal handwriting design like Spencerio. Spencerio is for special occasions, while Quantum Rounded is for headlines and other short text passages in every-day corporate communications. In comparison with Quantum, Quantum Rounded is much less ‘technical’ in appearance. It is less ‘mid-century modern,’ and more of the ‘social media’ age. Like Quantum, it offers users a palette of five different styles. A number of fine details stand out in Quantum Rounded’s character set. For example, there is a double-storey ‘a’ combined with a single-storey ‘g’. The typeface’s bowls swell outward and upward, particularly in the capitals ‘B,’ ‘D,’ ‘P,’ and ‘R.’ Meanwhile, the letters ‘K,’ ‘Q,’ ‘R,’ and ‘k’ each have curved tails on the out-strokes of their lower diagonals. The ampersand has a simplified form recalling the ‘Et’ ligature that caused the character to be invented in the first place. Quantum Rounded’s at-symbols align nicely in text, too.

Tarsus and Ennore: Two sturdy serif families

Sun, 09 Aug 2015 13:39:53 +0200

Tarsus (Left) and Ennore (Right)

Tarsus and Ennore are the two newest Latin-script serif families from the Indian Type Foundry. While these two typefaces bear similarities, they aren’t interchangeable; each has been developed to excel at different tasks. Tarsus is a sturdy text typeface that can handle any environment you throw it into, even newsprint. It features sharp, wedge-like serifs and open counter forms. Text set in small sizes remains quite legible. The family includes five fonts, running a weight range from Light to Bold. Tarsus Light is very low in contrast, but as the family’s weights grow bolder, their stroke contrast increases, too.

Tarsus (Top) compared with Ennore (Bottom)

At first glance, Ennore is a similar design. However, its glyphs are much smaller on the body than Tarsus’s are. If you equalise the x-heights of both designs, you’ll see that Ennore has longer ascenders, and its counters are even more open. Ennore’s letterforms feature bracketed serifs, instead of wedges. These curves give text set in Ennore a bit more nuance. Like Tarsus, Ennore includes five font weights. All of them have clear stroke contrast, even the Light weight. This makes Ennore more suited for display usage, while Tarsus is the better option for smaller-sized type. Ennore is an excellent face for editorial designers.

And the typeface’s names? Ennore is a Chennai suburb, while Tarsus is a term with much more meaning. In present-day medicine and zoology, it describes a bone in the foot. There is also a historic city in south-central Turkey called Tarsus.

Tarsus (Top) comes with old-style figures, whereas Ennore (Bottom) has lining figures

Tarsus’s numerals are oldstyle figures – the better option for running text – while Ennore’s are proportional lining figures. All of the fonts in the Tarsus and Ennore families have a character set of 385 glyphs, which supports all European languages written with the Latin script. Tarsus was designed in 2014–15 by Khyati Trehan and ITF; Ennore was designed in 2015 by Nikhil Ranganathan and ITF.

New Latin fonts: Deccan, Quilon, Touche and Vyoma

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 10:02:18 +0200

We have just added four additional Latin-script typeface families to the Indian Type Foundry library: Decan, Quilon, Touche, and Vyoma. Each of these designs is unique, and we hope that you’ll find great uses for them. Below are a few details about the special aspects of the four designs.

Deccan

Deccan (Latin) is a lovely slab serif with soft terminals. Not only are the typeface’s stroke endings rounded, one could also be described as friendly-looking – or even cute! Deccan’s letters are built around a vertical contrast axis. The forms used throughout the design simultaneously call the most interesting 19th century British modern types to mind, as well as quality 1970s digital faces. At its core, Deccan is a text face. However, the Bold weight’s letterforms appear so puffed up that this font can actually appear quite cuddly. The Bold just has to be used in editorial design and on packaging. The Light weight makes a fine headline choice as well; all of Deccan Light’s characters in appear monolinear, but as the family’s weights increase, so does the amount of stroke contrast visible in the family’s letters. Each of the five Deccan styles available is the work of Ramakrishna Saiteja, who also designed the Deccan Telugu family that we released at the beginning of the June.

Deccan Latin compared with Deccan Telugu

When it comes to Deccan’s numbers, the great curves that make up their design are instantly apparent. Often, numbers are overlooked by designers; here they really shine. Both the numerals and the lowercase letters are full of ball terminals – another one of Deccan’s interesting characteristics. Each font within the Deccan family includes 383 glyphs. The term “Deccan” itself refers to a large plateau in India that makes up most of the southern part of the country.

Quilon

Quilon (Latin) is also a relative of an Indian-script typeface we recently released: Quilon Malayalam. Both Quilon and Quilon Malayalam are the work of ITF’s Jonny Pinhorn. In terms of its design, Quilon is a high-contrast sans serif family. Like Deccan, it’s design features also transcend the centuries – elements of both 19th century English grotesques and 1990s postmodernism are present in its letterforms. Looking at the distant past, you can find parallels in the curls on Quilon’s uppercase Q and lowercase a, g, or r that appear very much like early grotesques, while the question, “what happens to a modern serif face’s forms if you strip off all the serifs?” is very postmodern.

Quilon Latin compared with Quilon Malayalam

In terms of the best areas for use, Quilon is most suited for display typography. As the weights progress throughout the four fonts in the family, their stroke contrast increases dramatically. For text set in the Regular weight, the Semibold weight may be the best choice to use for emphasising individual words; the family’s Bold weight is best reserved for headlines. Each font in the family includes 391 glyphs. “Quilon” is the previous name for Kollam, a city located in Kerala, India.

Touche

The Touche typeface takes its name from the French word for “touch,” which is fitting, as the best way to describe Touche is to call it a geometric sans with a special touch. Touche is not made up of the standard geometric forms found in many other typefaces of that genre; the internal strokes on the G and the Q, for instance, are very elongated. A top stroke has been added to the J, without forcing the glyph to become any wider. The S hugs the space inside of it; its arms wrap around the letter’s counterforms lovingly. The lowercase j has been reduced to its barest, most minimal nature, but the lowercase t does not follow suit and take the form of a cross – its bottom has an outstroke. Touch has two especially nice punctuation marks, too: the ? and the @. All of the family’s letterforms remain optically monolinear, even in the Bold weight. Like Quilon, Touche was designed at ITF by Jonny Pinhorn.

Vyoma

Joana Correia’s Vyoma is a friendly-looking typeface, similar to Deccan and Touche. It is an outstanding humanistic sans: its letterforms appear both playful and nice, and the stroke contrast is pretty low in all four weights of the family. Several letters (start your search with the capital R!) feature curved out-strokes. These are unusual for a sans serif design, but they definitely add personality. Vyoma has “swing” to it; just take a look at the capital Q or the lowercase b. On some letterforms, strokes end in vertical shears; others are cut off diagonally. The counterforms in this design are very open, and they help create words that are highly legible and a joy to read. Vyoma is truly an all-around sans serif family, and an excellent choice for use in a very wide variety of applications, including corporate identity, signage, and text (onscreen and in print). Each font contains 416 glyphs. In Hindi, “vyoma” is a word for the sky.

This is the ‘Antique’ you’ve been looking for – introducing the Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab typefaces

Thu, 28 Jan 2016 12:51:07 +0100

This is the ‘Antique’ you’ve been looking for – introducing the Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab typefaces

Together, Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab make up an astounding 28-font super family. The two typefaces serve up industrial-era letterforms, refreshed for a new century. In terms of design, these matching sans serif and slab serif faces compromise an anthology of some of the best characteristics of nineteenth century display typography. You could consider them as the steampunk addition to the Indian Type Foundry retail library.

Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab are ITF’s first matching sans serif and slab serif families for the Latin-script. Both typefaces are available in seven weights; each weight has an upright and a italic font on offer. Their character sets include 418 glyphs per font. Equitan Slab’s italics are ‘true italics’, while Equitan Sans offers a more oblique solution. Although each typeface is great on its own, Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab should be used together.This super family is ready for use in branding projects and packaging design. Although Equitan’s designer, DianaOvezea, was inspired by a specific typeface – Palmer & Rey’s 1884 ‘48 point Antique’ – Equitan is not a literal revival. While developing Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab, Ovezea aimed for a low-contrast letter forms, as you might expect in a slab or sans family.

Equitan Sans, with its closed apertures and arched shapes, resembles nineteenth century grotesques and offers a quiet balance to the outspokenness of Equitan Slab, while retaining similar skeleton forms. Despite this, it is not sterile, like so many of the mid-twentieth century neogrotesk typefaces. Equitan Slab’s uppercase create an almost woven pattern when set together, because of their oversized serifs. The italics follow suit, and include long outstrokes. These curls create a playful take on recognisable elements of the ‘Scotch Roman’ genre. Ovezea wanted to make a type family that is both sturdy and flavourful.

Wherever possible, the counters in both of the families are rounded, such as in b, d, p, q, 6, or 9; even the bottom counter of the ‘g’ has an atypically rounded counterform. The same two-storey form is used for the lowercase ‘g’ in both the Equitan Sans as well as the Equitan Slab fonts. However, its ear curls up in the slab serif fonts, while it lies flat in the sans. The most recognisably ‘Equitan’ character in the whole super family is the lowercase ‘y’, which has a straight tail, instead of a diagonal one. From Equitan Slab, the most striking characters are the arched-up legs of the capital ‘R’ and lowercase ‘k’, as well as the tail of the capital ‘Q’. The default numeral style in all 28 fonts are proportional oldstyle figures. Over an OpenType feature, tabular versions are available, as well as lining figures.

The name ‘Equitan’ is an anagram of the word ‘Antique’. Although slab serifs are typically associated with type classification terms like ‘Egyptian’ or ‘Ionic’, the name of the the first slab serif printing type – as shown in Vincent Figgins’s 1821 specimen – was ‘Antique’. Antiques were the predecessors of the Clarendon style typefaces, which began appearing in 1844. Initially, typesetters would use Clarendon faces to help emphasise something in a text. Eventually, designers would begin using bolder weights of the text face instead, and Clarendon types went on to be used in all sorts of environments.

Palmer & Rey’s 1884 ‘48 point Antique’, which set Ovezea off on the journey that would lead to Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab, is rather naïve by today’s standards. Its lowercase letters are optically overcorrected, and they don’t exhibit enough consistency for contemporary graphic designers to want to use them. Still, Ovezea was fascinated by the old-fashioned skeleton forms of these letters, with their very long serifs and comparatively closed apertures. It seemed as if they were hiding a secret elegance that she could only release by making a new typeface. In fact, Ovezea’s biggest achievement in Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab was her ability to convert centuries-old display ideas into working text letterforms for twenty-first century use.

Born in Romania, Diana Ovezea lived in Vienna before moving to the Netherlands to study typeface design at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. Today, she lives and works in Amsterdam. Ovezea has previously released fonts through Gestalten in Berlin; Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab are her first ITF release.

Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab are ITF’s first matching sans serif and slab serif families for the Latin-script. Both typefaces are available in seven weights; each weight has an upright and a italic font on offer. Their character sets include 418 glyphs per font. Equitan Slab’s italics are ‘true italics’, while Equitan Sans offers a more oblique solution. Although each typeface is great on its own, Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab should be used together.This super family is ready for use in branding projects and packaging design. Although Equitan’s designer, Diana Ovezea, was inspired by a specific typeface – Palmer & Rey’s 1884 ‘48 point Antique’ – Equitan is not a literal revival. While developing Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab, Ovezea aimed for a low-contrast letter forms, as you might expect in a slab or sans family.

→ Download Equitan PDF specimen.
→ Try Equitan Sans and Equitan Slab on Fontstand.

Diodrum Arabic: ITF’s first typeface for the Arabic script!

Sat, 16 Jan 2016 13:08:51 +0100

Over the past seven years, we’ve published typefaces for eight scripts: Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Latin, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. This month, we are adding a ninth script to the list; we’re proud to release of our very first typeface for the Arabic script, Diodrum Arabic.

Diodrum Arabic is a low-contrast font family with six weights; the lightest of these is ExtraLight. The letterforms of the typeface are designed in a Naskh style. Since Naskh is the variety that is used most-often today for digital Arabic-language typesetting, we’ve named this family Diodrum ‘Arabic’. Nevertheless, the font family includes all of the glyphs necessary for Persian and Urdu language-support – Urdu is one of India’s many official languages. We hope that Diodrum Arabic will appear to users of the Arabic script all over the world, no matter what language they speak.

As a script, Arabic typically places a stronger emphasis on the horizontal than the Latin script does. Since both the Arabic and the Latin letterforms in Diodrum are monolinear – neither their horizontal nor their vertical strokes exhibit much contrast with one another – Diodrum Arabic employs another method of increasing the prominence of horizontality: the letters’ counterforms have been designed to be large and open. Their ‘middle sections’ are therefore quite accentuated. Another result of this, coupled with the Latin’s tall x-height, is that Diodrum appears friendly and more legible, too.

The Diodrum typeface is optimized for corporate identity work, editorial design, and UI/UX projects. Even there is no serif in Arabic script letterforms of Arabic Diodrum are designed to carry the same impression as a its sans serif counterpart. Some of the ‘spurless’ nature behind Diodrum Latin has been carried over to Diodrum Arabic. Spurless typefaces feature smooth transitions from letters’ stems into their curved strokes – just look at Diodrum’s lowercase ‘n’. Finally, many of Diodrum’s strokes begin or end with lightly-sheared lines. These subtle angles add a trace of the calligrapher’s hand back into the generally-static language of sans serif types. The same may be said for the typeface’s Arabic-script dots, and other marks.

Like so many of the Indian Type Foundry’s typefaces, Diodrum Arabic’s design was something of a group effort. The Arabic-script portion of each font’s character set was created by Bahman Eslami, an Iranian designer living in the Netherlands. The Latin-script glyphs were released as a stand-alone family last year, developed by three designers based in Paris: Jérémie Hornus, Clara Jullien, and Alisa Nowak. Eslami previously designed the award-winning Harir typeface for Typotheque; he graduated from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, as part of the type]media class of 2014–15. Diodrum Arabic is his ITF debut.

The Diodrum typeface is optimized for corporate identity work, editorial design, and UI/UX projects. Even if there is no serif in Arabic script, letterforms of Diodrum Arabic are designed to carry the same impression as its sans serif counterpart. Some of the ‘spurless’ nature behind Diodrum Latin has been carried over to Diodrum Arabic. Spurless typefaces feature smooth transitions from letters’ stems into their curved strokes – just look at Diodrum’s lowercase ‘n’. Finally, many of Diodrum’s strokes begin or end with lightly-sheared lines. These subtle angles add a trace of the calligrapher’s hand back into the generally-static language of sans serif types. The same may be said for the typeface’s Arabic-script dots, and other marks.

Try Diodrum Arabic on Fontstand.

Khang: A brand new Sans

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 16:06:26 +0100

While some typographers may have already selected their “favourite fonts of 2015,” the Indian Type Foundry is releasing one last typeface under the wire. We hope that designers and editors around the world will consider it. Meet Khang, our newest Latin script sans serif family.

This face began as an experiment in Shiva Nallaperumal’s ongoing investigations into the definitions of monolinearity in type design. What would happen if a strictly monolinear sans typeface was fused together with the logic behind writing letters with a broad pen? In designing Khang, Shiva used the idea of stroke modulation itself as the typeface’s defining characteristic; the letters “Q” and “&” illustrate this modular principle clearly. The resulting “calligraphic strokes meet a contemporary sans serif structure” typeface, is not your typical humanist-style sans serif.

Unlike most calligraphic sans serifs, Khang takes after a neo-modern-humanist model, which is predominantly monolinear (e.g, FF Milo Sans, Fedra, etc.). Shiva thus maintained a degree of neutrality, while avoiding an artisanal or “hand crafted” feeling in Khang. Shiva isn’t the first designer to tackle this kind of hybrid typeface; he was inspired by previous attempts by the late Dutch designer Evert Bloemsma – particularly FF Balance and FF Legato.

The Khang family currently includes six weights – Extralight, Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold and Bold. Even in the Extralight weight, the typeface’s modularity is maintained – quite an accomplishment, we think. As a typeface, Khang is suitable both for long, comfortable reading and interesting display uses. It features compact, almost monolinear capital letters. The lowercase letters have a tall x-height. Ascenders feature diagonal shears – which of course are hallmark broad pen artefacts that add sparkle and character to the design. Similar pen remnants are visible in the forms of the lowercase “a” and “g”, too. Aside from these, all strokes end with either horizontal or vertical cuts. All of the letters have quite open counterforms; the apertures in “G” “S” “a” and “e” are also large. The lowercase “f” has a high waist. The leg of the capital “R” is rather Adrian-Frutigery.

Each of Khang’s fonts includes a character set with 434 glyphs. This ensures that all modern languages written in the Latin script may be set with Khang – including English and the languages of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Khang offers a few OpenType features that may prove helpful for Corporate Identity and Editorial designers: each font includes alternate single-storey “a” and “g” forms – including alternate glyphs for all of the diacritical letters that “a” and “g” can take. These are accessible via a stylistic set in InDesign or in CSS, or as via the stylistic alternates feature in Illustrator. Khang’s fonts also include 15 f-ligatures, plus a “tt” ligature.

And where does the name “Khang” come from? While Shiva was preparing for his thesis show at MICA in Baltimore, he promised his friend Daniel Khang that if Khang helped him with the huge amount of vinyl in his exhibition, Shiva would name his next typeface after him. It took Shiva almost 7 months to keep his end of the deal. Now back in India, Shiva is an in-house designer at ITF. His first typeface for us, Pancho, was released earlier in 2015.

Four new Latin families from international designers: Introducing Eurosoft, Recia, Zahrah, and KunKun

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 14:02:17 +0200

This October, the Indian Type Foundry is pleased to present four new typeface families for the Latin script: Eurosoft, Recia, Zahrah, and KunKun. Each is quite a different in terms of its design – one of them even references a centuries-old style of type and printing. Yet, they are all thoroughly 21st century products, and they come from around the world. Two were designed in France, while the others hail from India and Spain. All four are optimised for today’s communication needs. They look excellent in print, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t shape the text of your next websites or app, either. Have a look at our newest offerings:

For over a decade, graphic designers have been using rounded typefaces to signify a brand’s friendliness; Eurosoft fits right into this. Eurosoft is a large sans serif family with 10 styles. It has five weights on offer, each with a companion Italic. The typeface was designed in Paris by Jeremie Hornus and Clara Jullien.

As far as its appearance goes, Eurosoft is a technical-style typeface. Its letterforms are very square-like in terms of their forms, despite all of the typeface’s stroke terminals being rounded-off at their edges. This terminal treatment is more of a softer rounding-off than a sausage-style letterform. The stroke contrast in Eurosoft is very low; in fact, Eurosoft’s characters appear quite monolinear. Much of the typeface has been strongly simplified, for instance the lowercase a, g, m, n, r, and u have no spurs. The capital E, F, V, W, Y, and Z all feature corners that are more rounded than is common.

Eurosoft’s proportions include short ascenders and descenders, as well as diacritical marks that are almost flat. Lines of type in the fonts can be set tightly up against each other. The typeface’s Italic fonts are in fact ‘oblique’ designs, which helps strengthen the overall technical feeling of the family. Eurosoft’s character sets include 386 glyphs, and the fonts will work particularly well in either corporate identity projects or in editorial design usage.

Carlos De Toro is a Spanish designer, based between Barcelona and Logroño, and Recia is his debut typeface with ITF. Like Eurosoft, the Recia family also comes in 10 styles, but its five Italic fonts are ‘true-italic’ designs, which feature a cursive-structure in the letters. Recia is a contemporary-style serif family.

Its x-height is pretty high, as can be expected from today’s typefaces. The characters are slightly condensed in terms of their form, and their strokes are rather low-contrast. In the lighter weights, hardly any stroke contrast is visible between the thick and thin portions of the letters; in the Bold weights, stroke contrast is clear, but the thinner strokes are still quite chunky. There is no danger that they’ll break away in smaller point sizes. The axis of stress within Recia’s letters is vertical, and the typeface’s serifs all take wedge-shaped forms. Each font contains 516 glyphs, and the character set offers users multiple figure styles via OpenType features. The default numeral versions are proportional oldstyle figures. Recia is optimised for use in running text, particularly in less-than-optimal printing environments were sturdy letterforms are needed.

Zahrah is a multi-purpose text face from the Paris-based designer Yoann Minet. This Didone-style serif family includes ten styles, too. Each weight in the Zahrah family includes 395 glyphs. Like other Didone types, Zahrah is characterised by extreme differences between its thick and thin strokes.

Zahrah may be used for a wide variety of applications, from fashion or cosmetic labels to newspaper text, and from academic publications to the annual reports of Fortune 500 companies. All of Zahrah’s capital letters are short; for a text face, there is barely any differentiation between the size of the uppercase and lowercase letters – they each virtually blend into one another inside a line of text. Zahrah’s letterforms all also appear somewhat extended. The italic characters, especially, are rather wide, with forms that feel open and round. Zahrah’s design includes unexpected details that lighten up text set with the face. For example, Zahrah’s numerals include a more curved skeleton than is normal; the bottom-left of the capital Q is open, and the upright lowercase g has a tall, curly ear.

The family’s letterforms are full of little ball terminals, too, which get particularly playful in the Italic fonts. Even the typeface’s diacritics have personality: Zahrah’s acute, grave, caron, and circumflex all each made up of gently curing strokes, rather than straight lines.

While KunKun is the smallest of October’s releases, it may be the most fun of the four families debuting this month. The typefaces is from Hitesh Malaviya, who also developed Brahmos and Quantum for ITF. It is the latin counterpart to our earlier KunKun Devanagari family designed by Neha Bahuguna in 2011. KunKun’s design is something of a ‘handwritten sans.’ Each letter looks as if it has been written with a single monolinear stroke. Unlike Eurosoft, all of KunKun’s terminals are fully rounded-off; indeed, they are kind of sausage-shaped. Three font styles are available – Light, Regular, and Bold – and each contains 406 glyphs. The looped descenders on the lowercase g, y, and z strengthen KunKun’s informal appearance. These are particularly nice touches; they make the z into a two-storied letter, for instance. More standard-looking variants of g, y, and z are available via an OpenType feature in a Stylistic Set.

Despite KunKun’s informality, its basic proportions are in keeping with many other ITF text faces; KunKun features a large x-height and ascenders that rise above the uppercase letters. The descenders do not appear to be so deep, although they are optically as long as the ascenders. Special characters like the &, @, and § all take standard, typographic forms.

Of the alphabet characters, only the H is particularly whimsical. Each KunKun font also includes two alternate forms for the capital Q, and an optional closed-form 8; the standard version of the 8 is open at its top-right.

Free Indian Rupee Symbol Font

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:15:34 +0200

A new sign for the Indian rupee was introduced exactly a year ago and was immediately assigned a position in the Unicode standard. Many people were skeptical as to whether the new symbol would be accepted and used, but looking at the publishing and advertising world in India today, we have to conclude that the adoption rate for the new rupee sign is stunning. Our unscientific estimate is that 75% of prices now use the new currency symbol. The rupee symbol, a blend of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and Roman ‘R’ gives India a symbol of confidence and recognition in the global economy.

Both Euro and Rupee symbols were originally conceived as logos, with fixed proportions, so they have no relationship with the style of the font that they have to work with.

Compared to the adoption of the Euro symbol, the adoption of the rupee sign has been much faster, but there are some similarities. For example, both symbols were introduced as logos rather than glyphs, meaning that the symbols had a fixed appearance that worked well with surrounding text in regular width fonts like Helvetica, but not with light, heavy, or more ornamental fonts.

Note how poorly the Rupee symbol works in this sample from the Times of India. The symbol is too light and too small for the bold and condensed headline.

We at Indian Type Foundry have decided to adopt the symbol and to include it in all our fonts. Furthermore, we have decided to design and release a free font with the new rupee sign in various styles and weights. While the Unicode value of the new glyph is 0x20B9, in this font we encoded the 20 variations under capital letters A–T. Feel free to use it and show us examples of how it works for you.

Download the font in OpenType or in TrueType format.

The free ITF Rupee font comes in a range of styles — from Sans to Serif, to Condensed and Rounded, each in multiple weights to match any style of numerals.

Three scripts, three typefaces: Deccan Telugu, Munshi Devanagari, and Quilon Malayalam

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 08:20:18 +0200

This month, the Indian Type Foundry is releasing three new typefaces for three separate Indian scripts. These families have many things in common; not only were they each developed for text sizes, but all three designs also incorporate high levels of stroke contrast. Please take a moment to meet Deccan Telugu, Munshi Devanagari, and Quilon Malayalam.

Deccan Telugu

Deccan Telugu is the Indian Type Foundry’s first retail release for the Telugu script. This family – designed by Ramakrishna Saiteja – offers five fonts ranging in weight from Light through Bold. Each font contains 719 glyphs, including the many conjuncts necessary for proper Telugu shaping. Like the traditional typefaces that have long been used for designing text-heavy Telugu documents, Deccan Telugu’s forms feature a strong vertical contrast. The sides of the characters tend to be drawn with rather thin hairlines, while the curves on the bottom portions of the base characters are gracefully curved and feature heavy swelling. While this amount of contrast is to be be expected in the Bold weight, Saiteja has excellently brought it into every style, even the Light.

Munshi Devanagari

Like Deccan Telugu, Munshi Devanagari also has five styles on offer. The contrast between the family’s Light weight and the Bold weight is quite dramatic, and each of the fonts may be mixed and matched to good effect in editorial design. The letterforms in the typeface are classically proportioned. Like other traditional Devanagari text faces, they feature a diagonal contrast axis, higher-than-average stroke contrast, and large counters forms – the later make Munshi Devanagari’s base characters highly recognisable and readable. Each font in the family has 751 glyphs, including hundreds of unique conjuncts, to ensure full support for the major languages written with the Devanagari script. Munshi Devanagari was designed by at ITF by Ninad Kale. The design grew out of an unrealised custom typeface project; now it is available for licensing to everyone.

Quilon Malayalam

Quilon Malayalam is ITF’s third original Malayalam typeface for the retail market. While our previous designs for this script were primarily developed for display typography, Quilon Malayalam is a text face designed according to traditional Malayalam-script patterns. Quilon Malayalam’s characters are round and include visible stroke contrast; indeed, the play of thicks and thins along lines of text set with this family creates an even colour that is invaluable for readability. As the weights progress throughout the family, the stroke contrast used increases dramatically. For text set in the Regular weight, the Semibold weight may be the best choice to use for emphasising individual words; the family’s Bold weight is best reserved for headlines. Quilon Malayalam was developed by ITF’s Jonny Pinhorn. Each of its four weights include 504 glyphs.

A new sans and a new serif: Introducing Diodrum and Torrent, two Latin typefaces

Mon, 11 May 2015 15:15:58 +0200

This May, the Indian Type Foundry is pleased to add two more Latin-script families to its growing roster of typefaces. One of them was developed in-house at ITF; the other is from an international trio of Paris-based designers. ITF may be best-known for Indian-scripts typefaces, but Latin-script type design is an important element of our business, too. As Satya Rajpurohit – one of ITF’s co-founders – stated in a recent interview, ‘many clients only come to us to buy Indian fonts. But I thought it would be good to design Latin fonts as well; also because English is the second official language in India. Almost every graphic design project in India has English in it, and offering Latin typefaces is also a way to open up to an international market.’ In this spirit, we are pleased to present you with Diodrum and Torrent, and we’re interested to see what designers around the world will create with them.

Diodrum is a spurless sans family for the Latin script. ‘Spurless’ typefaces feature smooth transitions from letters’ stems into their curved strokes. A quick look at Diodrum’s lowercase ’n’ illustrates this perfectly – in typical sans serif faces, there might still be spur on top of the letter’s top-left corner. While some letters in the Diodrum family include a modicum of stroke contrast, the design these typefaces is generally monolinear. The family’s x-height has been set high, and the counterforms are large and open. This makes Diodrum appear friendly, in addition to being legible. Another design feature is visible in the typeface’s diagonals: instead of their being drawn with straight lines, Diodrum’s diagonals swell outwards. These curves give letters with prominent diagonals (‘K,’ ‘V,’ ‘W’ … even the ’N’) an increased dynamism.

Diodrum is available in six weights, and the lightest of these six styles is an ExtraLight font – a unique addition to our library. Because of its multiple weights, versatile range, and formal style, Diodrum is an excellent choice for usage in Corporate Design and UI/UX Design applications.

Perhaps unusual for a typeface family of this size, Diodrum is the creation of three Paris-based type designers working together: Jérémie Hornus, Clara Jullien, and Alisa Nowak. Although Hornus is now in Paris, he previously studied and worked in England; Nowak is a German, but she studied in France and now resides there. None of Diodrum’s designers have released typefaces through ITF previously; this is their Indian Type Foundry debut.

The Torrent family is a multi-purpose typeface with large wedge-formed serifs. Like Diodrum, Torrent’s letters have a tall x-height and wide-open counterforms. Some joins have been opened up, too – between the straights and the diagonals of ‘K’ and ‘k,’ as well as the vertical center of the ‘R,’ for instance. Unlike Diodrum, Torrent’s letterforms have a higher stroke-contrast model, one that is typical for serif typefaces that are intended for use in lengthy passages of text. Indeed, Torrent is a highly readable text face and will look clear even when used in less-than-optimal printing situations (cheaper paper and ink, high-speed presses, etc.).

In smaller sizes, Torrent’s wedge-shaped serifs won’t suffer any loss of detail. In fact, wedges of this sort are a hallmark of contemporary serif type design. Torrent is an excellent serif choice for use in book design or editorial design work, as well as in magazines, packaging, and publication design applications. The Torrent family currently includes five weights, from Light through Bold. Each font has 384 glyphs in its character set. Manushi Parikh designed Torrent at ITF in 2015; she has already published several families with us, including Begum Devanagari, Begum Latin, Begum Tamil, Director Devanagari and Latin, as well as Mute.

Begum super type family

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 07:43:23 +0100

Meet Begum, the Indian Type Foundry’s newest multi-script display super family. Begum is a serif typeface brimming with contrast and supports the Devanagari, Latin and Tamil writing systems. Along with maintaining a visually balanced contrast level throughout the scripts, the indic families are also distinctly latinized with serifs. This aspect is the most characteristic feature of the family.

The indic components in Begum are noticeably latinised with the use of serifs

Begum is different from most of ITF’s previous releases – not because it was conceived as a multi-script super family, but because of its seriffed nature. Many of ITF’s typefaces are sans serifs, monolinears or calligraphically-inspired. Despite serif typefaces’ history – indeed their antiquity – Begum’s appearance is ultra-contemporary. As is the case with many other serif typefaces currently used around the world in Editorial Design work, Begum’s Latin characters share DNA with some of the classic Anglo-Dutch types (Caslon, Fleischmann, Times, etc.).

Preview of Begum Latin

Editorial Design is now thoroughly multi-media; many publications release their content simultaneously in print, on the web and via Smart Phone apps. Begum’s diversity of intended media is also broader than was the case for many of ITF’s previous releases, some of which were fine-tooled for more specific areas like news tickers or interface design. Since it is a serif typeface, Begum is easily combinable with many other ITF families, including Akhand, Engrez and Kohinoor.

Begum Latin used in a display setting paired with Kohinoor Latin for text

In terms of its optimal range of sizes, Begum is a display face. This doesn’t mean that its effectiveness is only limited to headlines, however. Begum’s proportions offer possibilities for many kinds of shorter-length texts, i.e., call-outs, packaging design and the multi-line article introductions that are common in print and on screen. Longer-length texts are more likely to shine in Begum for languages written with the Latin or the Tamil scripts than with the Devanagari script, as Begum’s very high-contrast treatment of the Devanagari base characters is very much in the display tradition.

Despite the obvious latinization-factor of bringing Latin serifs onto Indian scripts, there is quite a tradition in Indian display typography of using Indic letters with seriffed strokes. Especially in the case of the Devanagari script, serif display faces are already found all over the country on billboards, in logos and for occasional headlines in almost every newspaper. Yet before Begum, no typeface had been designed from scratch that included stylistically-matching seriffed letters for both Devanagari and Latin. Text set with Begum in Hindi and English, for example, will match better than combining pre-existing Devanagari and Latin fonts could. This is quite beneficial for campaigns or publications operating in multiple languages simultaneously and gives Begum a leg-up in terms of effectiveness for Editorial Designers working in the Indian market. The Tamil component meanwhile echoes the display typography used in the Tamil literature publishing industry in the early decades of the 20th Century. It bridges history and tradition with contemporary aesthetic choices to create a clear, usable and characteristic display face.

Contemporary design of of covers for classics of Tamil literature using Begum Tamil

Many of the stroke endings in all three of the scripts supported by Begum have treatments that are almost “brushy.” Since Begum’s Tamil characters are upright in their design, the application of serifs to the vertical strokes is relatively unproblematic, and perhaps even less jarring than it could be considered in the case of Devanagari.

The distinctive stroke endings in Begum is a characteristic element that ties the three scripts under one visual language

For ITF’s customers, the Begum fonts are broken up into script-specific sub-families. Users may license just the scripts that they need – Begum Devanagari, Begum Latin or Begum Tamil (both Begum Devanagari and Begum Tamil each include Latin script support as well). Begum’s Devanagari character set has 765 glyphs, its Latin has 384 glyphs, and its Tamil has 289 glyphs. The Devanagari and Tamil fonts have all of the conjuncts and ligatures necessary for contemporary typesetting needs.

The complete Begum super family was designed in India by Manushi Parikh and released in 2015.

New Apple system fonts from ITF

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 10:58:43 +0100

The Indian Type Foundry is very pleased to announce that it has licensed two families to Apple: Kohinoor and ITF Devanagari. Apple now uses these as their default fonts for rendering Devanagari text in both iOS 8 (mobile) and OS X Yosemite (desktop). ITF prepared special customised versions of these two families so that they could work even better in UI than they did before.

Kohinoor Devanagari on iOS 8

Kohinoor is an elegant and low contrast sans serif design suitable for both body and display text. It can generally be seen as an all-around workhorse typeface for graphic designers, software engineers and branding specialists. Because of its clear appearance, it is easy to work with and inviting to read. Kohinoor’s counter forms are open; its Latin diacritical signs and Devanagari vowel marks are not fussy. The family includes five upright styles and a character set that fully supports the conjuncts and ligatures required by languages written with the Devanagari script. The Western and Central European languages written with the Latin script are supported, too.

Preview of Kohinoor Devanagari

ITF Devanagari, on the other hand, is a high contrast Devanagari design with classical proportions. The fonts in this family only offer support for the Devanagari script, but the combination of ITF Devanagari with Kohinoor is akin to the way that serif and sans serif typefaces harmonise in Latin-script typography, respectively. Since ITF Devanagari’s characters are based on scribal and traditional forms, it makes an excellent choice for book and magazine typesetting – but the family can even meet the strict demands of newspaper printing. Like Kohinoor, ITF Devanagari is a family of five weights, which remain legible even at small sizes.

Preview of ITF Devanagari

Curious about what technical aspects are new to the iOS and OS X versions of Kohinoor and ITF Devanagari? Here are some of the key differences:

➔ Both families now support Unicode 7.0’s full Devanagari block (U+0900–097F), including the newly added Marwari Dda character (U+0978).

➔ All fonts are shipped with both <dev2> and <deva> OpenType script tags. The older <deva> tag is preserved for legacy support, e.g., in OS X 10.9.

➔ There are eight possible forms that consonants may take in the Devanagari script — full forms, full forms with a nukta, half forms, half forms with a nukta, rakar forms, rakar forms with a nukta, half rakar forms, and half rakar forms with a nukta. Kohinoor and ITF Devanagari now include glyphs for all of these possibilities for each of the 34 basic Devanagari consonants (from क to ह, plus ळ). These fulfil the needs of any flexible spelling or orthography systems.

➔ The fonts all have improved support for the eyelash र. The Unicode Standard allows for two methods of inputting this (Ra + Nukta [or, alternatively, the Rra character] + Halant, as well as Ra + Virama + ZWJ). However, for more predictable behaviour, eyelash र related <locl> rules were intentionally excluded.

➔ When a matra or reph appears above the shirorekha (headline), a bindu (anusvara) is usually employed as a substitute for chandrabindu in Hindi, while some orthographies explicitly distinguish bindu and the candrabindu. The updated ITF fonts therefore have received properly-sized and positioned candrabindus for the reph and the matras.

See more images of fonts-in-use from iOS 8 here.

Kohinoor is an elegant and low contrast sans serif design suitable for both body and display text. It can generally be seen as an all-around workhorse typeface for graphic designers, software engineers and branding specialists. Because of its clear appearance, it is easy to work with and inviting to read. Kohinoor’s counter forms are open; its Latin diacritical signs and Devanagari vowel marks are not fussy. The family includes five upright styles and a character set that fully supports the conjuncts and ligatures required by languages written with the Devanagari script. The Western and Central European languages written with the Latin script are supported, too.

Curious about what technical aspects are new to the iOS and OS X versions of Kohinoor and ITF Devanagari? Here are some of the key differences:

• Both families now support Unicode 7.0’s full Devanagari block (U+0900–097F), including the newly added Marwari Dda character (U+0978).

• All fonts are shipped with both <dev2> and <deva> OpenType script tags. The older <deva> tag is preserved for legacy support, e.g., in OS X 10.9.

• There are eight possible forms that consonants may take in the Devanagari script — full forms, full forms with a nukta, half forms, half forms with a nukta, rakar forms, rakar forms with a nukta, half rakar forms, and half rakar forms with a nukta. Kohinoor and ITF Devanagari now include glyphs for all of these possibilities for each of the 34 basic Devanagari consonants (from क to ह, plus ळ). These fulfil the needs of any flexible spelling or orthography systems.

• The fonts all have improved support for the eyelash र. The Unicode Standard allows for two methods of inputting this (Ra + Nukta [or, alternatively, the Rra character] + Halant, as well as Ra + Virama + ZWJ). However, for more predictable behaviour, eyelash र related <locl> rules were intentionally excluded.

• When a matra or reph appears above the shirorekha (headline), a bindu (anusvara) is usually employed as a substitute for chandrabindu in Hindi, while some orthographies explicitly distinguish bindu and the candrabindu. The updated ITF fonts therefore have received properly-sized and positioned candrabindus for the reph and the matras.

- - -

Notable improvements of OS X and iOS's text engine:

- The nukta bug has been fixed.

- Half rakar forms can be shaped properly now.

- ZWJ and ZWNJ are properly supprted.

- Additional Devanagari characters, including Sindhi implosive consonants, Bihari and Kashmiri vowels, are recognized and shaped properly.

- Invalid character sequences are rendered with dotted circles.

- OTL Indic2 behavior / script tags are supported.

OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 mark the milestone of Apple finally support OTL Indic fonts properly
.

Kohinoor Gujarati

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 10:06:27 +0100

Kohinoor Gujarati is an all-around typeface for graphic designers, software engineers and branding specialists. With a clear appearance, it is easy to work with and inviting to read. Kohinoor Gujarati’s counter forms are open, and the shapes of its vowel marks are not fussy. The glyphs’ strokes are low-contrast. These features lend text set in the typeface an elegance that makes Kohinoor Gujarati suitable for both body and display sizes.

Preview of Kohinoor Gujarati

The family includes five upright styles and each font contains 672 glyphs – a character set fully supporting all necessary Gujarati conjuncts and ligatures, as well as the glyphs needed for Hindu Gujarati, Parsi Gujarati and the Kutchi languages.

Kohinoor Gujarati comes in 5 styles from Light through Bold

Satya Rajpurohit developed Kohinoor Gujarati over five years, from 2009 to 2014. The design is part of Kohinoor Multiscript, ITF’s first super-family. Begun with the goal of supporting all of the major Indian languages while harmoniously translating a single design aesthetic across each writing system, Kohinoor Multiscript currently supports over 150 languages that are spoken natively by 1.5 billion people. The super-family is an ideal choice for text-heavy multilingual projects, including those from the areas of corporate design, electronic-embedding in apps, navigation or signage systems, print publications, product instruction manuals and television subtitling.

Kohinoor Gujarati with other languages supported by Kohinoor Multiscript

Thanks to its low-contrast monolinear strokes and the open counters, Kohinoor Gujarati is a visual equal to humanist sans serif typefaces for the Latin script. Kohinoor Gujarati offers a similar colour to texts set in the Gurmukhi, Latin, Tamil or Devanagari sub-families from Kohinoor Multiscript.

Download the PDF specimen

Four new Devanagari fonts: Pancho, Sanchar, Volte and Koyla

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 15:49:17 +0200

This April, the Indian Type Foundry is very pleased to announce the release of four new Devanagari typefaces. Each of them – Koyla Devanagari, Pancho Devanagari, Sanchar Devanagari, and Volte Devanagari – is a unique typographic interpretations of the Devanagari script and a welcome tool for designers and developers working with text in languages like Hindi, Marathi, or Nepali. The four typefaces represents various typographic genre; there is a geometric sans, a humanist sans, an informal sans, and a wide, high-contrast reversed stress display face. Both Koyla Devanagari and Pancho Devanagari are whimsical lightheaded typefaces with a lot of personality. Sanchar Devanagari and Volte Devanagari, on the other hand, are more serious typographic workhorse families. Together, the release of these four designs add even more stylistic diversity to the ITF library.

Pancho Devanagari is a very informal sans serif family, and it is something of a jester in ITF’s otherwise serious catalogue. The typeface brings comic relief to our library. Pancho Devanagari’s family includes five styles, and each font has 750 glyphs. Designed by Lipi Raval, it matches our Pancho Latin family, which was designed by Shiva Nalleperumal and released last month. Like Pancho Latin, Pancho Devanagari pays some tribute to the work of Roger Excoffon. Like his iconic Antiqua Olive typeface, there is a lot of top-heaviness of many of Pancho’s characters. The top halves of the Devanagari a, gha, nna, tha, dha, bha, ra, sha, and sa characters for instance, are very exaggerated, even crazy in their appearance! Many other characters are extremely simplified and have forms that seem inspired by everyday handwriting, like the Devanagari i, ka, kha, nga, jha, tta, ttha, dda, and ha. Pancho Devanagari has rather short matras and ukars in comparison with its base characters’ height.

Sanchar Devanagari is an elegant humanist family with five weights. Each of these fonts, which range from Light through Bold, include 738 glyphs. The design is by Dhruvi Tolia. Sanchar Devanagari’s letterforms are monolinear, with open counters and some formal simplification – just as can be found in common humanist sans serif typefaces for the Latin script. Sanchar Devanagari’s e, ai, o, and au matras have traditional typographic forms; these matras and the typeface’s ukars are less than half of the general base character height. The characters include real knots, and open loops in characters like cha, ddha, tha, bha, and sha. The two halves of kha are separated, which strengthens the open style of the typeface’s design. Connecting strokes in the characters a, jha, nya, and sa, for instance, are straight, not curved.

Volte Devanagari is a monolinear geometric sans, designed by Namrata Goyal. Matches Volte Latin, also designed by Goyal and released earlier in 2015. A new voice on the Indian typographic landscape, the Volte Devanagari family offers five weights (Light–Bold), each with 766 glyphs – a streamlined character set equipped with the conjuncts and ligatures needed to render languages written in Devanagari. The typeface’s characters seem constructed out of an array of simple shapes, yet it has a clear typographic sophistication. Wherever you look, you’ll find openness and balance.

Koyla Devanagari is a single-weight display typeface whose letterforms are both high and reverse contrast. The font includes 758 glyphs. In terms of the details of Koyla Devanagari’s design, its characters feel quite brushy, even though most of its terminals end in vertical shears. All of the dots in the typeface are elongated, with flattened tops/bottoms and rounded sides. All of the typeface’s knots and loops are open, which increases the number of counterforms visible in Koyla Devanagari. The various matras and ukars are not so small, relatively speaking, for a display face – this increases the range of sizes at which Koyla Devanagari may comfortably be set. Not all of the typeface’s horizontal lines are thick; some elements connecting the left and right-hand sides of characters are thin, like Koyla Deavanagari’s vertical strokes. Diagonals are also normally drawn thin, especially if they represent the r consonant in a conjunct, or the below-the-base rakar form; the halant mark is also more of a hairline stroke. Koyla Devanagari was designed at ITF by Ninad Kale.

New fonts: Volte and Pancho

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 07:29:09 +0100

This week, the Indian Type Foundry is pleased to announce the release of two new sans serif typefaces for the Latin script: Volte and Pancho. Volte was designed by Namrata Goyal at ITF in Ahmedabad. The family is a geometric sans, but it differentiates itself from many typefaces in that genre. While Volte retains a feeling common to all geometric sans types, some simplification and reduction is visible in its letters. This is particularly the case with the capital ‘G,’ for instance, which has no horizontal bar.

Connoisseurs of geometric sans types will instantly notice that Volte’s ‘a’ and ‘g’ take the single-storey forms common in most geometric sans serif designs. The strokes in Volte’s letterforms are drawn so that they appear optically monolinear. Volte diverges from typical geometric interpretations with its straight-topped ‘3,’ as well as with the curls on the out-stroke of the ‘t’ and the descender of the ‘y.’ Some of Volte’s letters are very open: the ‘G,’ ‘M,’ and ’S,’ for example, and also the ampersand and question marks. The lowercase ‘k’ appears more constructed than geometric, but this solution was arrived at to open up the letter’s counters. The full-stop character – repeated in many punctuation marks – is round. The apostrophes take a simple wedge-shaped form.

Pancho is a very informal design. Despite also being a sans serif family, it could not look more different from Volte. Most ITF typefaces are rather serious; this is not the case with Pancho. The impetus for the Pancho’s design lies in a conversation that Shiva Nallaperumal, Pancho’s designer, had with Satya Rajpurohit, one of ITF’s co-founders. They discussed the word “Pancho,” which they both thought had an interesting sound, and they wondered if it would be possible to design an entire typeface with the name as a starting point. Typefaces normally receive their name at the very end of the design process, just before their release. What does Pancho actually mean? Although it is a cool sounding word, it has its roots in an historical figure: Pancho Villa, the early 20th century Mexican revolutionary leader.

So the brief for Pancho was make some both light-hearted and subversive. Rising to the occasion, Nallaperumal developed Pancho as the jester in ITF’s catalogue; the typeface brings some comic relief to our library. Pancho’s letters are round and irregular. Some strokes end in horizontal or vertical shears, others are cut off along a diagonal. In most cases, the top halves of Pancho’s letters have been drawn so that they appear larger and heavier than their bottoms; this is a trait that was used to great effect by Roger Excoffon in the 1950s for the design of Antique Olive. There is something of an Excoffon feel to Pancho – just look at the form of the capital “O,” which has a shape similar to an olive or an egg.

Although Shiva Nallaperumal is originally from Chennai, he currently lives in Baltimore/Maryland, where he is finishing up an MFA in Graphic Design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Many of ITFs typefaces are used in the United States, but Pancho is the first to be designed there. At MICA, Nallaperumal has studied with several well-known American graphic designers, including Ellen Lupton and the type designer Tal Leming. Pancho shows subtle influences from Leming’s own design practice, and it is clear that the type designs of Letterror in the Netherlands are a further source of inspiration for him.

The Volte and Pancho families each include five weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, and Bold. Volte’s fonts have character sets with 381 glyphs, while Pancho’s have 379. These character sets offer support for most Western, Central, and Eastern European languages written with the Latin script.