Contributor « Fonts.com

Rosella: New and Old Combined into Unique Elegance

Sabina Chipară’s research into Didot typestyles was the inspiration for her Rosella™ design. Like Bodoni, Firmin Didot approached his typeface designs as more than a medium of communication; they were also intended to be objects of artistic delight. Chipară realized that the 200+ year-old designs could be a . . .

Beefcakes: A Big Ole Charmer

Beefcakes™ recalls childhood memories of Jim Ford’s first “brush” with letters. “I remember going to local shops with my mom, as a kid,” he recalls. “They would have big hand-painted signs in the window, often in neon paint – you couldn’t miss them. Long before I was aware . . .

Arthur Baker Tribute

“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” – William James Arthur Baker passed away late last year at the age of 86. While he is no longer with us, his calligraphy and typeface designs will surely be part of the typographic lexicon for . . .

Pull Readers in with Entry Points

When designing your layout, think and work type first using style, size, color, and weight to create unity and variety. The heading or headings, lead paragraph, and any pull quotes should function as entry points with those different typographic levels offering a variety of visual flavors for your readers to . . .

Hombre: A New Design with Traditional Roots

Hombre™ is a sure-fire attention-getter. Drawn by Thomas Oldfield and loosely based on popular typefaces of the 19th century, Hombre offers all the gun-slinging swagger and rugged style of Jesse James and his crew of outlaws. But, like John Wayne, it’s at home in a lot . . .

Review: Explorations in Typography

There are scores of “entry level” books on typography. I know, I’ve written a couple myself. Much rarer are books that explore the more complex and sophisticated realms of typographic communication. Carolina de Bartolo’s Explorations in Typography, now in its second edition, is one of these books– and . . .

Great Type Makes Sites Stand Out

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SST: The Strong, Silent Type

The SST™ typeface family is sure to wear well. Its subtle design traits provide a quietly handsome and consistently friendly typographic presence. Drawn to be a comfortable melding of orderly structure and an organic mien, SST can be used for just about any typographic application you can think of. And . . .

Fonts.com Web Fonts is Now the Monotype Library Subscription

Subscriptions are a big part of what we do here at Fonts.com, and we’ve had a quite a bit of activity on the subscription front as of late. We recently introduced some major enhancements to the Monotype Library Subscription, including web font support for all fonts in the . . .

The Process is the Inspiration

I can think of few books that are a better buy than House Industries’ The Process of Inspiration. If you’re a lover of type, the book is a celebration of House Industries’ 24 years of “hot-rodding the alphabet.” If you’re a print or interactive designer, it provides . . .

Featured Web Font: ITC Conduit

It’s hard to imagine someone referring to the ITC Conduit® design as being beautiful – or even handsome. “Quirky” doesn’t quite fit the description either; although many letters are clearly idiosyncratic. Somehow, its naive shapes and graceless proportions strike a familiar chord. As its designer, Mark van Bronkhorst says . . .

Web & Desktop Fonts in One Subscription!

We’re excited to announce some brand new updates to the Monotype Library Subscription we offer here on Fonts.com. While this product has always been a tremendous value for designers, it’s now even better. Starting at just $9.99 a month with an annual contract, the Monotype Library . . .

Top 100 Fonts.com Web Fonts for February 2017

Long a favorite of typographers and lovers of type, Caslon has always held a position of importance. Benjamin Franklin admired Caslon; which may account for why both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were first printed in this typestyle. George Bernard Shaw, another famous lover . . .

Introducing Masqualero

The Masqualero™ typeface family has charisma, unrelenting sophistication, and – like the legendary Miles Davis jazz composition of the same name – more than a little attitude. Davis once said, “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” Drawn by Jim Ford, a Monotype Studio designer, Masqualero isn’t . . .

Better Paragraph Spacing

Having learned about styling paragraphs for the web in the prior post, Paragraph Spacing, this follow-up will provide a little history about paragraphing, explain why paragraphs are important, show how to use HTML and CSS to style them, and offer alternate methods for marking paragraphs—such as using . . .

Applied Sans: A Classic and Contemporary Fusion

The Applied Sans™ typeface family takes the charm of early sans serif designs and restifies it for the 21st century. The first sans serifs typefaces widely used in print were Germanic in origin – designs like Ideal Grotesk and Venus. Admired for their neutrality and simplicity, when compared to other typefaces . . .

Paragraph Spacing

As a web designer, do you take paragraphs for granted? Putting in little to no effort designing them? Using whatever built-in paragraph <p> format your content management system provides? Relying on the defaults of your WYSIWYG web editor? Worse yet, doing next to nothing and hoping the . . .