Our latest addition from Font Bureau is Proforma, a typeface by Petr van Blokland with an interesting background. Initially designed in 1983 for Purup, a Danish company specializing in forms (hence “pro forma”), it was one of the first typefaces developed specifically for low and medium resolution output. Proforma features classic oldstyle shapes and proportions, but swellings on stems are achieved by straight lines with distinct edges. These, as well as the simple, tapered serifs, are much easier to render than the smoothly modulated curves of traditional text faces. Today, this makes Proforma especially suited for screen typography and the web.

Proforma’s six weights are comparably close to each other, originally to enable compensation of different stroke weight on different papers, colors, or inverted text. This can be just as useful on the screen in order to take into account backlit surfaces and multiple resolutions. The roman styles are accompanied by pronounced true italics that give distinction in text sizes and reveal their interesting angularity in large sizes. If you want to combine Proforma with a sans serif, try Alright Sans, Amplitude or Salvo Sans. (Petr van Blokland designed Productus as a matching companion, available on Webtype in the near future.)

As with all fonts on Webtype, Proforma can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Proforma webfont page.

While the Freight series’ serif styles exist in several size-specific variants, from Micro to Big, Freight Sans is designed as a versatile, all-purpose sans serif fitting a large variety of applications. The six weights, light to black, plus italics provide sufficient styles for legible body copy as well as delicate or beefy display typography. We are especially happy to also offer the recently added condensed styles as webfonts for extra punchy headlines.

The family’s spacing is attuned to work well in most sizes, from medium to large, while the rendering is optimized for font-sizes down to 14 px. If you are looking to combine Freight Sans with a serif for body copy, try Harriet Text or Giza RE. In larger sizes, Whitman Display, Prensa or Trilby may compliment the sans in an interesting way. Or, for a perfectly harmonious pairing, just wait a few more weeks until the serif members of the Freight series are ready for release on Webtype.

As with all fonts on Webtype, Freight Sans and Freight Sans Condensed can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Freight Sans webfont page.

In a quest for readable and functional fonts optimized for today’s newspapers, the Poynter research institute commissioned a comprehensive type series comprised of serif and sans serif fonts for text and display, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones. As part of this series, Poynter Old Style Display draws on the 17th-century romans of Fleming Hendrik van den Keere, who is known for his stronger, more stalwart letterforms than the elegant French designs of the Renaissance period. The typefaces are large on the body and economical in fit — the condensed and narrow styles in particular — which makes the family especially suited for all kinds of headlines in editorial environments.

Poynter Old Style Display is available in three weights and three widths. The normal widths are accompanied by matching italics. Besides the obvious compatibility with its partner for small sizes — Poynter Serif RE — the display styles combine well with almost all sans serifs, such as Antenna RE, Apres RE or Alright Sans.

Poynter Old Style Display Narrow Bold with Poynter Serif RE

As with all fonts on Webtype, Poynter Old Style Display can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Poynter Old Style Display webfont pages.

Designed by David Berlow and initially released in 1989 as Bureau Grotesque, the typeface has come to be acknowledged as the quintessential interpretation of the English 19th century sans serif. Inspired by the grotesques of Stephenson Blake, Berlow harmonized the greatly differing character shapes of his model and expanded the design into a family of several matching weights and widths. At the same time he kept the typical lively character and idiosyncrasies of the early sans serifs intact, which lend the series much of its flavor.

The family was met with great success and soon grew as several publishing houses commissioned more styles. In 2006, Jill Pichotta, Christian Schwartz, and Richard Lipton rounded it out into a systematic series of 27 styles and managed to retain Bureau Grot’s strong signature character over the wide range of five widths and six weights. With its narrow styles, Bureau Grot is an ideal headline face for compact columns and large display typography. The lighter weights of the normal and wide styles are suited for sizes down to 14 px. If you’re looking for a fitting serif companion, try combining Bureau Grot with Harriet, Turnip or Benton Modern.

As with all fonts on Webtype, Bureau Grot can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Bureau Grot webfont page.

Bold Monday’s first release on Webtype is their celebrated and recently expanded Nitti. The monospaced type family is best known for its prominent role in the popular iA Writer desktop and iOS writing applications. In light of this prolific use, the small preliminary family was expanded and thoroughly optimized for screen rendering.

While Nitti only makes an appearance in the light and medium weight in iA Writer, we are happy to offer the full, extensive family: five weights — light to black — with true italics and very broad language support. Nitti not only speaks all languages using the Latin alphabet but also Greek and Cyrillic. If you don’t need the full character set and want to minimize bandwidth, you can subset the fonts in your project settings.

Unlike many monospaced typefaces, Nitti doesn’t feel overly mechanical, but is approachable and contemporary. The quirky, idiosyncratic shapes of the early “grotesque” designs of the 19th century lend Nitti its humanity and warmth. Optimized for font-sizes down to 11 px, Nitti is well-suited for code samples or technical notes where a more casual atmosphere is desired, or as a reader-friendly alternative when setting longer passages of monospaced text. It combines well with other grotesque-inspired typefaces like Titling Gothic and Salvo, or with sturdy serif typefaces like Benton Modern or Harriet Text.

As with all fonts on Webtype, Nitti can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Nitti webfont page.

At the other end of the spectrum, we added two options for very large sites that receive over 15 or 20 million page views per month. And remember, if you don’t find a license that suits your needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us — we can surely find a solution that works for you.

On this day for type lovers, we are delighted to announce webfonts for the especially lovable Harriet Text and Harriet Display by Jackson Cavanaugh at Okay Type. The elegant serif series draws inspiration from text faces of 19th and 20th century American and English design, but is unburdened by any particular historic model. With rational form and a good portion of grandeur, Harriet manages to combine exuberance with practical versatility.

The series is comprised of a stalwart text family and a sophisticated display family. The text styles with their moderate stroke contrast and stability are suitable for copy sizes down to 12 px. The display styles, on the other hand, play out their refined detailing in headlines and other large applications — from the sparkling Thin to the vigorous Black, with particularily enticing italics.

Top: Harriet Display has finer features and elaborate forms which shine at large sizes. Bottom: Harriet Text is more rugged, with more simplified forms that stay clear at smaller sizes.

If you need to cover a large variety of content but don’t want to stick to one type series only, Harriet combines well with almost all sans-serif typefaces, for example Alright Sans or Nobel. For extra-small font sizes try Benton Modern RE. To experience the Harriet Series in all its webfont glory first hand, be sure to also check out Okay Type’s splendid specimen site.

As with all fonts on Webtype, the Harriet Series can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Harriet Text and Harriet Display webfont pages.

We are pleased to announce Savanna Script, the latest work from Richard Lipton and the Font Bureau. Demonstrated in his earlier typefaces such as Avalon, Sloop, and Tangier, Lipton is a master of transforming the elegance and spontaneity of calligraphy into beautiful, functional fonts. With Savanna he created a very condensed roundhand script that dances with rapid, effortless energy.

For moden web browsers that fully support OpenType font features, Savanna comes with three sets of capitals and variety of alternates and ligatures, allowing it to adapt to the desired space and tone. These, along with the three weights, give the family a versatility that is rare in formal scripts.

Use Savanna Script as an accentuating display face in extra large sizes. It combines well with almost all serif faces such as Poynter Serif RE, Benton Modern, Bulmer, Bell or Whitman. As with all fonts on Webtype, Savanna Script can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Savanna Script webfont page.

The caps for Savanna Script are tall by default, with shorter options available for browsers that fully support OpenType font features. Examples are shown below with the CSS settings for each option.

To enable the Mid Caps in OpenType-savvy browsers, turn on stylistic set #1 using the following CSS settings:
-moz-font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1;
-moz-font-feature-settings: "ss01=1";
-ms-font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1;
-o-font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1;
-webkit-font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1;
font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1;

To enable the Short Caps in OpenType-savvy browsers, turn on stylistic set #2 using the following CSS settings:
-moz-font-feature-settings: "ss02" 1;
-moz-font-feature-settings: "ss02=1";
-ms-font-feature-settings: "ss02" 1;
-o-font-feature-settings: "ss02" 1;
-webkit-font-feature-settings: "ss02" 1;
font-feature-settings: "ss02" 1;

We are happy to announce that David Berlow’s popular Titling Gothic is finally available for the web.

The roots of this series are in ATF’s Railroad Gothic, a condensed all-caps headline face from the late 19th century. While Titling Gothic started out as a relative of Rhode, it soon took its own more squarish and less idiosyncratic direction. Berlow designed a lowercase, introduced subtle curves and more regular proportions, and expanded it into a coherent 49-style family, giving print designers near infinite options for headlines and display typography.

25 versatile styles are now made available as webfonts: five weights (Light, Regular, Standard, Medium and Bold), each with five widths (Extended, Wide, Normal, Narrow and Condensed). Use it for headlines and similar display applications. The light condensed lends elegance, the strong and punchy bold weights are especially striking in all-caps. Titling Gothic combines well with other rational typefaces and serifs with vertical stress such as Benton Modern, Ibis or Giza.

As with all fonts on Webtype, Titling Gothic can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Titling Gothic webfont pages.

The distinctive, contemporary design tips its hat to the slightly unorthodox model of the reverse contrast slab serif, where — unlike typical typefaces — horizontal strokes and serifs are thicker than the vertical stems. Trilby’s designer, David Jonathan Ross, has long been fascinated with the topsy-turvy quality of this style, the French Clarendons, popular in the 19th century and usually associated with wood type, playful circus broadsides, and the Wild West.

In Trilby, Ross avoided the decorative excess of this type genre and reined in the eccentricities. The result is a surprisingly versatile typeface with generous and subdued letterforms. It is suited for a variety of uses — from short paragraphs of text to headlines, banners, and other display applications, exuding just the right amount of ease. Trilby is available in eight styles: four weights, from Regular to Black, plus italics and extended language support. It combines well with text faces such as Ross’ latest design Turnip RE, or Giza RE, as well as sans serifs like Benton Sans RE, or Amplitude.

Left: Trilby with standard characters in Safari. Right: Trilby with feature-settings active in Firefox.

If you design for modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 10, Chrome 22, and Firefox 4 or later, you can make use of Trilby’s stylistic alternates — for instance a single-story a and g, a non-kerning f, a barred A, and a Q with a looped tail — as well as oldstyle figures, numerous ligatures and other features. These can be accessed in CSS3 via feature-settings. Here is a sample set of CSS-rules that will cover all OpenType-savvy browsers:

-moz-font-feature-settings: "salt=1, onum=1, ss01=1, liga=1";
-moz-font-feature-settings: "salt" 1, "onum" 1, "ss01" 1, "liga" 1;
-ms-font-feature-settings: "salt", "onum", "ss01", "liga";
-webkit-font-feature-settings: "salt", "onum", "ss01", "liga";
-o-font-feature-settings: "salt", "onum", "ss01", "liga";
font-feature-settings: "salt", "onum", "ss01", "liga";

As with all fonts on Webtype, Trilby can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Trilby webfont page.