New from insigne: Aviano Serif

Insigne’s popular Aviano series returns with Aviano Serif. Aviano Serif features the same classically inspired and extended proportions of Aviano, but instead of the brush drawn forms of the original, Aviano Serif features a more geometric take with small, sharp serifs.

Aviano Serif is perfect for mastheads, headlines and powerful logotypes. The Aviano Serif family includes four weights for a wide array of design possibilities.

All weights feature 40 OpenType ligatures, old styles figures, 28 alternate characters and 10 eagle ornaments for unique, custom designs.

Frutiger Serif

I saw over on Type For You that Linotype is releasing Frutiger Serif, a update of Meridien. I've always been a fan of Frutiger's work, and considered Meridien one of my favorites, if not my absolute favorite, serif typeface. It seems to be rarely used here in the states, which makes it somewhat exotic. It's a underused jewel. Check it out. The page includes some interesting background information.

New from insigne: Kasuga

Kasuga, Japanese for spring day, is a contemporary script with eastern influence. Kasuga’s pointed and fluid brush strokes evoke the orient with just a hint of the west. Kasuga is perfect for designs that need an Asian atmosphere.

New from insigne: Stefania Antique

Stefania Antique is an aged version of Stefania, an elegant italic script.
Stefania Antique is perfect for creating unique and ancient looking chancery manuscripts. A regular version and a more distressed alternate are available. Stefania Antique includes 64 OpenType ligatures that are used to automatically replicate the natural appearance of letterpress printing.

New from insigne: Pauline

Pauline is a sans serif with a strong influence from retro scripts. Pauline is a geometric face formed with slow and deliberate rounded brush strokes. The tall ascenders give it a useful touch of naïveté. It’s a face suitable for some interesting titling and short bits of copy.

New from insigne: Sommet

Project a powerful image with Sommet. Sommet is a sans-serif with a high-tech web 2.0 feel. The typeface family is a powerful and sharp design that is highly legible onscreen even at small sizes. Sommet features a tall x-height, and its letterforms are compressed, perfect for when layout space is at a premium. The Sommet family includes four weights and italics for plenty of design options and is suitable for body copy and display text.

New from insigne: Florencia!

Florencia flows with the spirit and excitement of a beautiful dancer. Its extended and flowing letterforms are designed to glide across the page. This contemporary script is perfect for any project that calls for a spicy, exotic feel. Florencia includes OpenType swash alternates, old style figures and ligatures.

insigne 1 year old today!

It was about this day (give or take a few days) that I went into type design full time. It's been a great year. I am sure that next year will bring some great typefaces, and I look forward to it. Thanks to all my customers that made this dream a reality.

New from insigne: SavoryPaste

SavoryPaste is a grungy sans serif from insigne. SavoryPaste includes 64 discretionary ligatures of the most common letter pairs for a more natural look without distracting repeating characters. The typeface family also includes OpenType small caps, old style figures and alternates without filled counters. The SavoryPaste family also includes a completely interchangeable and more restrained alternate.

New from insigne: Kidela

Kidela is an exuberant and eccentric serif typeface reminiscent of hand painted signage. Kidela features tight kerning and spacing, and some interesting effects can be achieved by adjusting the tracking. The typeface includes 64 discretionary ligatures to extend the natural hand painted look, alternates, oldstyle figures and small caps. Please see the sample brochure to see these ligatures in action. Kidela is an excellent choice when you need a fun and interesting serif.

New From insigne: Terfens

Terfens is a sans serif with inspiration from chancery scripts like Stefania. Subtly rounded and eschewing harsh technical lines, Terfens is a warm and inviting typeface. Its tall x-height gives it a friendly but not overly informal feel. Its readability and unique contemporary look makes it suitable for a wide range of design applications.

New From insigne: Stefania.

Stefania is an elegant chancery script, designed with wedding invitations specifically in mind. A contemporary take on chancery scripts, Stefania retains a traditional calligraphic feel. Its features include a more pronounced slant for an elegant and dynamic flow and plenty of swash capitals. With ample flourishes and frills, including a score of alternate characters, Stefania works well in a variety of creative uses. This formal script is perfect for projects that call for a sophisticated appearance.

insigne Releases Antigen!

Antigen is a forceful and fresh typeface with a strong futuristic feel. Its characters have a wide stance, and the lettering is subtly rounded. Antigen includes a set of OpenType alternates that remove the spike crossbars for a less aggressive appearance. Antigen is great for titling that needs an edgy, assertive and ultramodern look.

insigne Releases Brigette!

Brigette is based on the popular insigne script Natalya. The frilly script has been acid dipped, scratched and destroyed for use in grungy design jobs or any other use that calls for a ragged script. Three different degrees of deconstruction are available. The Alternate Two variant is highly distressed, and when rasterised by many programs at smaller point sizes appears almost illegible, but prints just fine. OpenType features include 64 OpenType ligatures that can be used to extend the natural appearance of the lettering, oldstyle figures and ending swashes. Brigette works great in conjunction with insigne Splats!

insigne Releases the Q3 Catalog

The 2007 Q3 catalog is available here (.7MB) for download. The catalog includes our most popular faces with some brief background information and type samples.

insigne Newsletter

I am pleased to announce that starting next month insigne will send out its first monthly newsletter. This will be a great resource, including behind-the-scenes information about our latest releases, information about upcoming promotions and a sneak peak at pending releases. I also hope to offer some great deals for our newsletter subscribers. More on that a bit later. You can sign up here, and you can opt out at any time.

insigne Releases Aviano Slab!

Aviano Slab is an extended slab serif and the newest member of the popular insigne series Aviano. The same classically proportioned letterforms are now available in a slab serif variant for powerful impact.

New from insigne: Lourdes

Lourdes is an informal script font drawn with quick, thick brush strokes. The script appears to be quickly dashed down, and the characters were carefully designed to create a subtle rhythm. The strokes are slightly muted to avoid an overly aggressive appearance. Lourdes has a wonderful active tempo that works well for headlines, logotypes and signage.

insigne Releases Montag!

Montag is an extended, rounded sans-serif. In many ways it can be seen as a more conservative, extended version of Chennai. As with Chennai, it includes simplified versions of many characters for titling or when a more futuristic appearance is called for. Choose Montag whenever you need a distinctive sans serif.

insigne Releases Kairengu!

Kairengu is a casual and lively rounded sans serif. The characters are “gloopy” as if ink was poured onto page surface. Kairengu is a great choice whenever you need an amusing face with a lot of character.

insigne Releases Aviano Sans

In 2007, insigne released Aviano. It’s beautifully drawn extended letterforms were a hit with designers and Aviano quickly became insigne’s most popular offering of early 2007. Now, insigne returns to the classical forms that were the inspiration for Aviano with a sans serif variant. Aviano Sans is wide and geometric, and is perfect for any job that calls for a chic and dignified sans serif.

insigne Releases Splats!

Insigne Splats! is a series of vectorized ink splatters that can be quickly and easily used in your artwork. There are 64 unique and useful ink splatters. These individual splats can be combined, decomposed and organized to accent your designs. Splats! works well in conjunction with some of insigne's grungier faces such as Valfieris Aged, Arendahl, Majidah or Blue Goblet.

New insigne Catalog

If you are looking for a printable catalog of insigne's finest offerings, look no further.

Download (1 MB, .PDF file)

Natalya Released

Natalya is a flashy and rhythmic script. The script has more space between characters than most for better legibility, and the basis point for the ornate swirls is the golden ratio. This makes for an especially harmonious typeface with timeless appeal. The typeface includes three alternates with variations of the ascenders and descenders. All three fonts include OpenType ligatures, oldstyle figures and ending swashes for an even more elaborate appearance.

Questal Released

Questal is an intriguing unicase serif. The face appears rather eccentric, yet it still retains a refined character. The typeface is wider than most, but not to the degree that Aviano is extended. The font includes some interesting OpenType alternate characters to extend the quirky quality of the letterforms even further. If unicase isn’t your thing, the Questal family also includes a small caps variant for more traditional uses. Use Questal for eye-catching and distinctive logotypes or headlines.

Carta Marina

Carta Marina is based on the titling found on the famous map drawn by Olaus Magnus in 1539. The map of northern Europe took 12 years to complete, and the total size is a huge 1.7 meters tall by 1.25 meters wide. More information about the map, as well as the high resolution reference document used to create the typeface and illustration set can be found at the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.

The titling is slightly aged, very sturdy and elegant. Carta Marina includes a full set of OpenType alternates for every character in the English alphabet, oldstyle figures, historical forms, small caps and 64 discretionary ligatures. These ligatures are used to alter the appearance of the type so that the printing appears realistic and without any duplicate letters to detract from the antique appearance.

The Carta Marina family also includes some of the unique illustrations that give the map much of its character. It includes depictions of fanciful sea creatures, land animals and some of the inhabitants of the lands pictured.

Unicase Font

Sorry for the lack of updates for the, oh, past half month. I have been working on a new typeface called Carta Marina, based on the characters and illustrations found on that famous map. I am going to do my releases concurrently with myfonts.com now, so that is the reason for the slight delay. I also took a few trips to the Florida coast and to the Tennessee mountains, looking for a place to relocate.

The latest is a unicase. These are fairly popular these days, and I thought I would give it a whirl. I'm trying to think of a good Latin-esque name to match my naming convention.

Stratham

This is a bit late, not because there was an issue with the design. For some reason, I was unable to upload the information to the provider that handles my paypal payments and downloads, Payloadz.

Stratham is Kinshasa. I noticed when playing with the design that it had a very "English" feel to it. It reminded me of walking through Gatwick Airport. So I changed the name to something more English: Stratham.

You can learn more about the design process here at Typophile. I always appreciate the help of the folks over there. What they have to say is always useful. Special thanks to Jelmar Geertsma and Dan Reynolds for their comments and spurring me onward.

From the description:

Stratham is vigorous sans-serif inspired by the slab serif Clarendon. It is a heavy display face, and has a tangible modern British feel to it. The italic is especially dynamic and forward moving. Stratham includes OpenType titling and swash alternates, old style figures and small caps. Stratham is useful for headlines, highly legible signage or posters and works well in conjunction with the always popular Clarendon.

April Fools, 1977

Ran across this great typography related April Fools joke.

"San Serriffe is an archipelago consisting of two main islands and a number of smaller ones. Of the larger islands, the more northerly (the Caissa Superiore or Upper Caisse) is roughly round and the more southerly (the Caissa Inferiore or Lower Caisse) round but with a promontory extending south-westwards from the south-east, at Thirty Point. The two major islands are separated by the Shoals of Adze, dominated by Cap Em. The capital, Bodoni, is in the centre of the Caissa Superiore, and is served by an international airport. It is linked by fast highways to the major ports, including Port Clarendon."

From the Sans Serriffe Wikipedia article.

Kinshasa 3

Still more progress on Kinshasa. Some tweaking of pretty much every character here.

Kinshasa 2

More progress on Kinshasa. Still quite a bit to do.

Kinshasa

I've tentatively titled this one Kinshasa.

It's starting to take on some character. I like whats going on with the K, R, etc. I need to incorporate that in the rest of the uppercase. The lower is somewhat reminiscent of Frutiger, surprisingly.

Note that my naming convention of late has been to name sans after cities, serifs in Latin or Italian and scripts after girls names.

Next from insigne: A "Clarendon Sans"

Next up on the list to do is a Clarendon Sans. At first, I was kind of wondering if it was possible. After some sketches I was satisfied this would turn out ok, but I later found that the concept has sort of already been done. See Leviathan. Despite that, I am going to move forward. I think there are few twists I can run it's direction.

Logo Design History

I love branding. In a way, I see every typeface that I create as a "brand." Recently, I ran across this excellent site detailing the design history of many of today's logos. An interesting and inspiring source.

Logo Design History.

Madeleine Released

Madeleine is an open script face with influence from early 50's scripts. The stroke doesn't have much variation, and the characters are wide and flowing. The script also features OpenType end swashes and discretionary ligatures to extend the twirling and fluid nature of the script. This mischievous script is useful for informal invitations, scrap booking or whenever you need a retro look.