TYPOGRAAF — Geometric modernist display typeface

Typograaf is simple looking modernist style aimed for display use. It doesn't work well in a long line if text nor at smaller sizes. But perfect for large display work, logo's and such. The letterforms have several little nuances and multiple custom crafted curved parts with smooth (near) real Bézier contour quality.

So far only general concept plus some extra's was created, no multilingual suport for now.

Let me know what you think

Cheers

GROOVERIDER — 70's future retro display sans
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Grooverider is another groovy looking display style with that distinctive 70's retro aesthetics.

The concept for the lettering is that of a solid future retro / space-age style with inversed-stress.  It's reversed weight contrast adds some additional groovin' funkyness and good old boogie wonder flavour to the font's overall characteristics. Making it somewhat of a hybrid mixture between two distinct 70's and 80's retro styles.

Simple at the surface, but rather complex down at the Editor level, since the letterforms have several tailor-made geometry and curve shapes. Pulling off some glyphs without disrupting the (near) real Bézier curve geometry was tricky I must say. Like for example the joined letters such as lowercase Æ/Œ, question mark, @ sign, number 2 digit, percent sign and lowecase letter S all proved difficult. But also some unlikely ones that are typically pretty straight forward now were trickier within the font's parameters. But I'm pretty satisfied with the end result so far. Little to no compromising imperfections slipped into the design,  one or two real minor ones are present, but only truly become noticeable once the size is fully blown up.

It was very fun to make though, I hope y'all like it...

Cheers

Opening day of Marvel's "The Marvels" movie! Couldn't resist making a chibi version of Goose, the Flerken from the original Captain Marvel film. #StrongestAvenger

This allcaps font is meant to be used starting with a Capital letter, then lowercase letters following it. But no one will listen, will they?

A sans serif display unpretencious font with a slightly futuristic touch. Readable even at pixel size, although its legibility decreases somewhat when used for long stretches of continuous text. "ff" and "tt" ligatures available.

PS: My huge thanks to Sed4tives for his much appreciated help.

VON NEUHAUS — Geometric “Bauhaus”-inspired style
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This is the latest evolution of a “Bauhaus”-inspired constructivist style typeface design that originally started 5 years, or two font versions back.
To me personally this is a long awaited triumph, that has finally materialized after years worth of been haunted by this idea, and the crazy speculations about this ghost that would never be...
Well, that was untill now...  So at last, I can now finally proudly present to you this latest of arrivals to come from this unforeseen series of typeface progressions.
This newborn addition is in fact the 3rd phase of this letter concept's evolution, and caused the font project to undergo a series of addaptations that graduatelly increasing the levels of sophistication possible by chaging it's internal structure and behaviour within the FontStruct-editor. This 3rd addaptation unlocks the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” full power potential.
Enabling all editor functionallity to provide the most versatile font creation capabilities available within FontStruct.

STF_BLAUHAUS was the font's very first version, created back in early 2019. It's the font's original concept as it innitially was first intended. It essentially started out as a personal study into the design of letters on a small grid. And more importantly, the creation of required composite bricks to do so.
The idea back then was to craft the most complex geometry possible without the use of any “Expert Mode” functionality whatsoever. Now, what this innitially did was still quite novel to me at that time, as this had led to the development of a FontStruction that was solely built from the extensive use of composite bricks. Not just a couple, but a staggering 272 composite bricks in total. Many of which in fact are quite intuitive and required certain amounts of careful thinkering with the maths found in it's geomtry to craft these custom brick compositions.

So as explained above, there was no use of any of FontStruct's “Expert Mode” functions. This meant that the option to nudge, flip or rotate any of the bricks wasn't available. Now this changes everything in respect to building complex fonts, since in order to get all the bits and pieces of a letter such as: crossbars, intersections, curves and corners properly aligned requires, a precisly fitting composite brick to be tailor-made. In terms of the FontStruct limitations, this cause the physical properties of FontStruct's brick composition tool to be fundamental as to how much complexity and refinement can be put into it's letter geometry. In other words this is fundamental as to how well crafted the design is going to look in the end, since there is no option to further manicure shape or form other than from within those bounds of the adjacent 16-brick-array grid squares of a selection for composition.

I've choosen to design the alphabet concept in this “Bauhaus”-inspired geometric style, simply because of the simplicity this style has in terms of its basic pure geometric forms. The final result became this simple and bold looking small grif display type with a “3-bricks” Em-size only.

but it had some crucial compromises that had to be made due to FontStruct's design limitations. Not terrible, but not quite perfect either.
One very important byproduct from this limitations as were described above was a huge collection of very intuitive custom brick compositions that offer seemless alignement and perfect fits, basically an extensive set of custom bricks that work in a very similar fashion as FontStruct's default “Connect” bricks.

Bringing us to the main reason for 2022's version of this font.
STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus) was the font's second version, and most recent state that it sat in for the last year, up till this now. In this 2022 version of the of this font design modification the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” functionality was introduced into the design. Hoping to further manicure some of these compromised critical area's in an attempt to see what refinements could be implemented to revise the 2019's original version.

Now that the option to nudge, flip or rotate bricks was available, new more complex geometric shapes suddenly became possible. This sparked an explosion of new characters and additional alternative forms. Although now the FontStruct editor got vastly more versatile and potent, it remained strongly limited by that still present 1:1 brick size filter setting. Nevertheless, this made possible a very substantial update of the older font, and allowed many new shaping capabilities.

STF_VON NEUHAUS is the 3rd and final evolition to have come from my earlier FontStruct endeavours; STF_BLAUHAUS and STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus)
This version  basically saw the transition from a font only using 1:1 brick size filter into a font at 2:2 brick size filter settings to unlock all power potential of the FontStruct editor's “Expert Mode” functions.

I could now write another eqyually as long body of text, explaining what's new in this final version or which other improvements were made, or say about it whatever the hell I want, but I figure that the picture becomes even more apparent when simply comparing the 3 fonts from old to new, and see the evolution happening before your eyes.

Start with STF_BLAUHAUS, folowed by STF_BLAUHAUS (Plus), and witness the full glory of "next-level" FontStructing that made possible the last version STF_VON NEUHAUS.

I hope you like it,

Cheers

SPOKOYNOY NOCHI — 1920's Art-Deco style
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This is a simple monolinear Art-Deco unicase font. Upper & Lower case glyphs are the same sets. But in addition to the unicase (default style) there is a full alphabet of glyph alternate forms located in the Half Width And Full Width Forms Unicode block.

I done global kerning, but extra pairs are still required..

I hope you like it,

Cheers

BEACH RESORT — 1920s Art-Deco style
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Beach Resort is a tall geometric display sans inspired by the Art-Deco aesthetics.

It's condensed style makes up for a rather tall and narrow looking letter concept. The design is further characterized by this distinct asymmetric curve geometry. A tiny touch of stress was added on the vertical axis to create this gentle stroke contrast. The stressed weight of the horizontals automatically compensating it's optical correction issue.

— Only minimal kerning for now, more will be added soon

Hope y'all like it,

Cheers

Based on the logo of the movie Prototype (1992).

BATAVIER (Pro) — Geometric display sans
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[ MEMOIR ]
Revision / revival of the geometric lettering seen on a 1916 Dutch litho poster for the Wm H. Müller & Co.'sRotterdam-London passenger service called Batavier-Line(Batavier-Lijn in Dutch) which was originally designed by Bart van der Leck(1876 - 1958).

The Batavier Line existed from 1830-1960, and was the oldest steam shipping line in The Netherlands.

[ UPDATE INTEL ]
A couple of small changes were implemented compared to v/d Leck's original lettering. Most significant is the upscaled Ampersand, but numerous other small cosmetic or optimizing modifications were made as well.

I completed the full alphabet plus numerals and included additional symbols and punctuation marks to make it a fully functional typeface. The lettering is all caps (majescule) only. Some lowercase letter locations harbour a glyph alternate uppercase form as could be seen in the original litho poster source. Another bunch of alternate uppercase forms and underlined “superior” small capital letters were located in the “Halfwidth And Fullwidth Forms” Unicode block. In addition to that it has accented Latin letters for multilingual support. Also two resized alternate forms for the Ampersand and two stylish ligatures have been included.

[ SUMMARY ]
This is actually the second revision I did for the litho lettering by v/d Leck. The first attempt was made using a (faux-) Bézier approach, resulting in a huge grid canvas (168 grid units / bricks tall monstrosity). This made it a lot of hard work to build and for some letters impossible to properly implement kerning since FS values only allows  min. -10 / max. 10  of grid units for kerning.

As part of the endeavor to refurbish some of my older FontStructions STF BATAVIER was one of those that was in serious need of some overhauling as well. The problem it presented was the font's cap-height. It was actually so tall and impractical to work and / or modify, that the first revival attempt never really fully materialized beyond a basic character set.

A full glyph only fitted on screen with the FS-editor zoomed-out max. and my browser zoomed-out at 30%. At this scale not only the canvas grid lines in FS's editor all but dissapeared, but it also resulted in a down-sized brick (or 1 square grid unit) with on-screen rendering at only 3×3 pixels, as oposed to 64×64 pixels with the FS-editor's default zoom settings.

So imagine selecting a tiny 3×3 px speck when working the glyph canvas at brick level to modify glyphs... pretty much impossible. Now, the other situation wasn't a whole lot better. This had the browser's zoom restored back to 100%, making the glyph canvas at brick level “workable” again. But in respect to the cap-height this only renders a very small section of the glyph on-screen. Requiring a huge deal of additional canvas navigation in FS's canvas editor, better known as “Pan the view (H)”, which is done with the hand tool.
And well, as many of you will know, this is an absolute bummer When navigating (or panning) a glyph bottom to top requires 3 full canvas swipes.

So yeah, the only way for an extended version ever to materialize was to be rebuild it from the ground up at a much small scale, using very different measurement ratios compatible with FontStruct's kerning.

[ TECH INTEL ]
This second revision attempt successfully reduced the font's cap-height down to a comfortable 5 bricks (or grid units)  tall and Em-square of 7 bricks total. Some optical compensations were implemented to certain elements such as stroke weight corrections and careful minute differences in vertical positioning of letter mid-section elements.

For now thats all Folks..

Cheers

SEADWELLERS — 1920s Art-Deco Sans style
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I was somewhat inspired to do a Art-Deco style lettering of my own after seeing the stylish Art-Deco flavored FontStruction Aquamarine by IronClaws

Other than that the two fonts remain unrelated and Seadwellers poses no resemblance to Aquamarine. Instead I sort of did a 1920s Art-Deco style lettering with thin geometric letterforms. It's comes as a Majuscule only and the letters have nice quirky width variations, with some letters appearing almost extended, while others are more narrow.
— The similar aqua-themed concept is merely coincidental.

Only basic character set!

It remains a WIP for now..

Cheers

MOVIEMAX  — Groovy bold & roundish 70s display sans
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Moviemax is a bold display sans-serif that has a groovy 70s offbeat look. Essentially an all-caps lettering concept with simple looking letters. The basic geometry and inversed contrast with its soft rounded finish create an immediate endearing effect.
The default characterset comes as all-caps (unicase) only, with no glyph alternative forms. It has been completed with additional symbols and punctuation marks.

To make thing a little more interresting I have also included a full (A-Z) alphabet set of small-caps letter modifications with drastically altered proportions. Complete removal of the inversed stressed contrast to make a more simplified and cleaner looking minimalist letter style. Their size was also reduced to 50% of the cap-height (scale ratio ≈ 1:2), providing an optional alternative for the missing lowercase forms in the font.

To finished off this extra set of small capital letters, another additional full (A-Z) alphabet set of large capital letters was included. These letters have also been scaled down a bit to better fit with the small capital letter set (scale ratio ≈ 6:8 or 75% of cap-height).
The 2 sets include a slight more unique and stylized level of sophisticated characteristics to the font, and when used combined together in a mixed-case text format creates nice text capitalization.

These alternative forms are located in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms unicode block.

A set of basic punctuation marks that align with the small capital letters had also been included and could be found in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms & Private Use Area 2 unicode blocks.

I hope y'all like it

Cheers

KThis is just a silly unicase font with alternates, made with simple squares and triangles (and some few other bricks)... But the colours captivated me. I hope you like the result. PS: You can also find an additional colour space (if you need it) in the "|" glyph.

ハイフンで真ん中の線を伸ばせるよ。

イタリックにするとかっこいいかも。

視認性？そんなのないよ。

Made with the well-known Grafilone typeface (by Bo Berndal) in mind, but more elongated and avoiding its curious roughness. In addition to the basic set of glyphs, some special ones have been added and the Cyrillic alphabet has also been included. The ligatures "ff" and "tt" are located on the characters "ff", "fi" and "fl". Enjoy it, please.

work in progress

Just for fun, change the correct bricks for others always is amazing!

VOLLE BUISJES — Geometric sans-serif style
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[ INTRODUCTION ]
This font had derived and materialized from my previous FontStruction called Buisjes, and had innitially been planned to be made into this “solid”-style instance that would've then were to be combined and included to the original master font. That idea was later canceled when I decided not to make this part of the “Buisjes”-typeface.
I still went on completed it though, but I was now simply treating it as this unrelated new font instead.
The original “outlined”-variant still stood testimony in this second stage of development, as it served as the global basic backbone for this. But, since it now no longer was bound by accurate representation I could start utilize more dynamic sculpting techniques and make minute adjustments that incnclude some optical corrections, as well as implementing a slight more polished looking geometry.

[ TECHNICAL BACKGROUND ]
I took a clone from “Buisjes” and started modifing it into this new solid style. What I basically did was utilizing the “brick swap”-method in the FS-editor to replace every brick inside the font's “My Bricks”-palette. By doing so, essentially converting the font one-brick-at-a-time into this 1 : 1 conversion of its source without making any additional changes to the actual glyph-contours.

After a while due to some undesirable result that came from replacing the original bricks the design took a different turn when I started realizing that making an exact 1 : 1  conversion into this solid style wouldn't generate the most desirable looking font. This new solid version that was rendered from the “brick swap”-process seemed to have several optical complications, that when compared to the original outline version, had quite the different effect on its physical properties as well as the aesthetic quality of the letterforms, and had far less visual appeal. These newly presented optical misfortune also had a direct negative effect on the font's legibility. In oder to gain a better understanding as to why it took a toll on legibility some additional thing needs to be explained first, to make sense of it all later. This explains in short the visual effect of added contrast that comes from that “bi-linear”-characteristic nature of the outline version, which employs so much more emphasis to the font's overall geometric properties of various form, and therefor to the contour shape of a glyph. In return this has a direct impact on the overall effectiveness of these forms.

The reduction of this additional contrast within the font's “positive vs. negative”-whitespace balance for the solid version results in a letterform that has a rather weak representation of its several typographic components as well as for each of the individual letter-parts that form a whole, which also help to distinguish one letter from another. In simple words this means that a solid style lacks a lot of that emphasis that is present in the the original outline version, and makes for a far less pleasant and effective font.

Another issue I had with the 1 : 1 identical conversion was the unanticipated but pretty drastic deterioration of its initial “wow”-factor in the solid version that was generated. No longer beneficiary from additional added value that came with a more “decorative”-characteristic that  is present within a outlined glyph contour. Also the “bi-linear”-nature of the outlined letters sort of gave the impression it was putting double the emphasis to the typographic parts and the geometric properties that make up each letterform. The rather squarish “box”-like characteristics of the lettering became much more evident in the solid glyph face. Shifting visual focus from the previously more ornate display attraction away towards this more “mechanical”-style that is this rather plain and somewhat shallow looking flat faced letter.

All of these were things that worked out just fine in the font's outlined version, but not so much in terms of a solid “filled”-like style.

Here are some of the things that cause trouble within an exact  1 : 1  conversion into solid bricks:

 • Enclosed typographic elements render much thicker than what is considered “acceptable”
(requires optical correction)  

 • Diacritics render too thick and often too big
(requires a complete re-design)  

 • Radius of FontStruct's default solid circle arc connection brick is too small
    ‣ Making a solid font constructed from these to look compressed
    ‣ Arc intersection point not sitting deep enough
 • Reduced emphasis in depth of geometric form
    ‣ Simple rather “feature-less” and “squarish”-looking geometry
(both requires numerous custom composite bricks in order to break-away from these constraints)

— The combination of the above in terms of the appropriate adjustments required to make optical corrections in order for it to have balanced proportions will have such significant impact to certain aspects of the physical presentation of the letterforms that they no longer share that seamless overlapping cohesion, and it couldn't really classify any longer as being this solid / filled style instance to the original master font.

Essentially what this meant is that I have decided not to make this part of the “Buisjes”-typeface. I still went on completed it though, but now simply treating it as a new unrelated font instead. The original outlined version still stood testimony as it served as the global basic backbone for this. But, since it now no longer was bound by accurate representation I could start utilize more dynamic sculpting techniques and make minute adjustments. Include some optical correction, as well as implementing a slight more polished looking geometry.

That wasn't all (LOL) but yeah I'm done typing for now!

Hope you like it, more info follows..

Cheers

PHOTONIA (Pro) - 70s future retro style
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70s style reverse contrast sans with future retro aesthetics, perfect for projects with a vintage sci-fi, space age or computer theme.

This is actually a refurbished and extended version of an older FontStruction I did back in 2019. The original PHOTONIA was a cool looking little work, but didn't quite made the most of its design concept. Inexperience and poor design decisions had led to inconsistencies and other flaws throughout the font. Besides those it also had a small character set that mostly consisted out of the basic Latin block and bare essential symbols & punctuation marks. But imo it still had quite an interresting retro vibe and the potential to be more. So I decided to give the old project some well deserved refreshments.

First I started eliminating the inconsistencies that were present in the older work, than I continued polishing and re-design / modify several characters hoping to create a greater overall unity to the entire piece. Once I was fully satisfied with this renewed improvements it was time to build and expand the character set towards a more complete lingual and typographic support.

➜ ⚠ Previous Version:
 ▶ Basic Latin only
 ▶ Minimal kerning

➜ ⚠ What's New Inside:
 ▶ Additional Latin and accented Latin
 ▶ Diacritics
 ▶ Many glyph alternative forms
 ▶ Additional symbols and punctuation marks
 ▶ Horizontal box drawing (page deviders)
 ▶ Typographical symbols
 ▶ Ornamental printer's characters
 ▶ 1680 stored kerning pairs

Cheers

FRUNTSTOCT — FontStruct logotype reinterpretation
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For all ya failed attempts at re-creating the FontStruct logo typeface.

Many have tried their take on it, most without convincing succes, and often looking downright horrible.
Two of the most commonly made mistakes are..  1) The introduction of a uppercase alphabet  2) Having a tendency for including far too many stuff in terms of extended language and typographic support, aiming for large multi-lingual character-sets with as many glyphs possible.

The lettering for the FS-logotype has this very distinctive modular geometric stencil concept. The underlying glyph structure consists of 5 horizontal rectangular segments, that together with a custom set of simple geometric blocks form a modular system that can be easily re-modeled or re-arranged to form the different letters and required parts that help to distinguish each individual letter from one another.
The modular system itself is highly simplified and easily accessible to implement additional changes. But typically speaking a simplified modular system comes at a price. And the further a system was simplified, the greater the amount of limitations will be. Which literally translates to a reduction in overall design depth and freedom to implement a more diverse complexity.

—TECHNICAL SPECS:
[Dimensions]               Segments
X-Height             —     3
Cap-Height         —     4
Ascender             —     1
Descender           —     1

[Filters]                            Value
Horizontal Brick Size    —    2
Vertical Brick Size         —    1.8
Horizontal Grid Scale    —    0.9
Vertical Grid Scale         —    1

In case of this FS-logotype concept, there are a number of key components that put in place this very strict window of parameter-locked propperties, that exclude all but a few remaining options which could still be exploited, and therefor fully dictate whatever is, or is not possible.
Having only 5 segments, limited geometric components and highly restrictive rearrangeable capabilities towards implementing variation all adding up to the difficulty-level for extrapolating some of its more complex and- / or denser forms, symbols accents and puntuation marks.

To cramp excessive amounts of complexity into a very narrow band of realestate would have a certain negative wear on its aesthetic qualities. And is likely to result in a combination of messy glyph composites and queer-looking letter-inventions, contrapped in a mish-mash of irregular and gawky looking, at times even disfiguring geometry that sit at the heart of this problem.

This is exactly where those bad choices can either make or break your font. The modular system for FS's lettering clearly isn't the most suitable of fonts for uppercase forms and complex geometry.

This doesn't mean that it is impossible, as was demonstrated by a small number of re-interpretations that actually do include fairly decent uppercase inventions. One of such that have successfully pulled off the inclusion of a uppercase set for his rework of the logo typeface was Zhalgas Kassymkulov—previously known as architaraz.

His attempt is a beautiful display of craftmanship and clever simplicity.

Here is a list of attempts that I think are successful re-interpretations of the original FontStruct logo:

Structurosa Italic — by four
AT Archistruct Outline — by kassymkulov
Structurosa— by pauldhunt
FS Logotype — by WeDoFonts
pixelstructia — by gamesgames
fs Colophon — by user-juli
fs sanstruct — by ETHproductions
Realised — by thezenmaster1000
Structurosa Bold — by pauldhunt
FontStrukt 2 Soft — by Jamie Place (FontBlast)
Structurosa Bold Too — by pauldhunt
 

— WHUTZINSIDE THIS FRUNTSTOCTION?
Now, a extensive explanation for the decision to not include uppercase forms to the font, as well as for the constraint on total character amount had been broadly covered above. I think that small caps numeral figures make a much more sleek looking glyph, and tying the overall character set much more together as a whole.

Another, and I say, rather more unique feature found in my version of the lettering is only a subtle one in fact. One that mostly works invisibly, that without the awareness of the reader, is easily missed. And can only truly visually materialize and appreciated seen up close. This is the implementation of several slight deviations and custom sculpting of certain curvatures and round features. Introducing an ever so slightly more diverse dynamic, but also taps deeper into some of that shape contrast propperties.

In addition to that I've also included several glyph alternative forms and small number of ligatures to play around with.
among these glyph alternates there is also this continuous string of 13 rather experimental looking glyph variations for the lowercase letter 's'.
These aren't actually meant to be usable characters, but instead is a collage of different configurations that make various curved geometry, and are simply stored in a glyph-style fashion that provides an actual physical estimation on their appearence and for me to test their functional values in a text format.

So far so good,
I am happy with how the font turned out to be, it is fairly consistent looking and still remains quite usable as a font.

That's all for now folks...

Cheers.

Various alternates in the capitals.

@ : ligatable S.

# : ligatable T.

$ : baseline-aligned f.

` : zero-width apostrophe.

Unicase font with a lot of alternates in the lowercase to improve the general playfullness. Also added more diacritics and accents, and remodeled and kerned the old glyphs. (Plus: other "1" at the "t", the 3rd "U" -and their accents- are at the "v", "ò", "ó", "ô" and "ö", respectively.)

ETC SOLID42
ETC SOLID42 is a futuristic display font based on The Studio Temporary & RetroSupply Co.'s SOLID70 (https://www.retrosupply.co/products/solid70-font). 

JS-PTT 1975 (INLINE) ― Geometric modular typeface system
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Another font addition to the ever evolving and growing collection of revivals and inspired works called LETTERS OP MAAT, a project celebrating and trying to recreate the typographic contributions originally designed by Dutch graphic designer Jurriaan Schrofer. This time I did sort of a revision / recap based on Schrofer's 1975 trichromatic sketches he did for the PTT (TD) the technical department of the Dutch State Company of Post, Telegraphy and Telephony (PTT)  that featured a style variation to one of his alphabet systems.

JS-PTT 1975 is a typeface family of three font styles called (SOLID), (INLINE)and (OUTLINE), that seemlessly overlap for combined multi-layer capabilities. Allowing easy multicolor replication similar to the original sketches and more, but also to provide three different isolated forms for individual use as separate fonts.

Now, without diving too deep into the man's biographic profile I do want to point out the following; ―Despite the unprecedented amount his typographic brilliance has contributed, he remains relatively unknown, but certainly no stranger among real typ-o-philes. Schrofer was light years ahead of its time. The level of crafmenship he put into his work was often overshadowed by his mind-blowing experimental, at times even bizarre and psychedelic typographic approach on letterforms, and can easily make one not truly realize the amount of expertise and skill often on display. Therefor he probably remains best known for his extravagant endeavours in book design.

Between 1973-1979 Schrofer worked on a assignement for the Dutch client called PTT (TD) this was during his time with Total Design. For the PTT (TD) Schrofer worked on a big multi project assignement he himself cataloged "Bewegwijzering Girokantoren". This essentially was the design of multiple visual identities for floorplans of 3 office buildings owned by the company. The project gave birth to several new style variation for several of his alphabet systems, one of those was this variation that introduced the rounded corners to some of the letterforms.

This particular recap was based on a alphabet system seen in numerous of sketches Schrofer designed in 1975 for the Dutch ministry of welfare, public health and culture (WVC) department for aesthetic design with the PTT. Part of the technical service at the PTT, responsible for the visual logistics of the company. The PTT, at the time a state-owned multi-utility company providing countless services. All the letters originally provided in Schrofer's sketches are included, I designed all the missing letters plus a couple of alernatives following the original's design parameters. In addition to that I designed and included numerals and some symbols and punctuation marks as well.

During my studies of Schrofer's work I noticed that various alphabet systems reappeared in many of his works. Further research showed that throughout his carreer he seemed to have developed and pre-fabricated multiple alphabet systems, variations and concepts that he constantly reused, refurbished, and recycled over the course of his carreer. Therefor it can be difficult to pin point the exact origins for some of his lettering concepts. Which is something I learned along the way and did not really anticipated for when I innitially started this LETTERS OP MAAT project, so some of my ealier fonts for this project haven't exactly all been properly researched.

For example the lettering concept seen in one of his designs for the PTT (TD) had already appeared two years prior of this PTT materials, when it was used in the 1973 brochure called Grafiek Per Postbode for Galerie 33. This brochure shows the same alphabet system that he later reuses for one of the PTT office builing floorplan designs. The brochure features an outlined variation of that same alphabet system for the text Heading, and a rounded mono-linear variation to this same alphabet system for the Subheading. This mono-linear variation itself had been used in the work for The Beurs van Berlage (Foundation) as well [IMAGE], the Beurs Van Berlage is a Dutch commodity market building located in the centre of Amsterdam. The alphabet system later then got digitalized for implimentation in the Dutch passport, and was acompanied by several additional derivative styles to this mono-linear version of (you can probably guess it) that same alphabet system, including a 5x7 Dot Matrix. Schrofer's design concept for the Dutch passport eventually never got used. And there were several other reapearances of the alphabet with several clients throughout his carreer.

I know it once again is a lot of info to digest, but I want to portray a proper image of the whole story that involves this project as well as it's font contribtions, so I can't help myself here, lol. But I'm pretty certain there are people out there that can appreciate this informative background, so I hope y'all didn't mind it too much.

The full font family could be found here: STF_PTT 1975

Interrested in more of my Jurriaan Schrofer inspired? Please take a look a my complete collection of Fontstructions tagged with STF-LETTERS OP MAATfor the full catalog of fonts I contributed to this project so far.

Cheers

VAN NELLE (Blueprint) — Geometric modernist sans
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☛ THE SOURCE
A re-interpretation of the 1926 geometric sans serif alphabet system reproduction by Jacob Jongert, published in a 1930 sourcebook by N.J. van de Vecht. The geometric uppercase set of the alphabet system is what would later become the famous sans serif capitals which he used for lettering throughout many of his Van Nelle materials.

☛ THE FONTSTRUCTION
Attempt at making a convincing recap of the original alphabet by Jacob Jongert as it was shown in the 1930s sourcebook, and extrapolate that into a full functional font. The decision to go with a small grid sparked a number of limitations in terms of the design freedom that forced some inevitable changes. But the general idea sort of became not to make it a revival, but rather more or less a faithful revision. One that would still be instantly recognizable yet didn't necessarily had to be all about accuracy.

☛ —The small grid design made sure this wasn't happening anyway!

But, for instance, the most striking difference between the two fonts (their weight) in fact is such a byproduct for one of those limitations. Something FS's small grid couldn't properly reproduce, so VAN NELLE (Blueprint) has a slight stronger weight, making the font somewhat of a bold style version of the original. This in addition provided me with slight extra freedom to inplement a little personal touch for further manicure of the font's finer details. Which allowed me to cope with some of the optical clunkiness that come with a fatter face and the grid based design.

Besides these circumstantial differences, which were basically beyond my control, I've also made some intentional changes to make the typeface more practical to use. The changes include things like the significantly lowered ascender height, the slight different width for certain letters, larger tittle (dot above i, j & ij), and several more. despite these changes I believe it very much still reflects what Jongerts once invisioned for the system.

☛ SOME NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CREATOR
Jacob Jongert(1883-1942) was a advertising designer from the Netherlands. After varied studies, including being Roland Holst’s assistant and an acquaintance and colleague of S. H. de Roos [who brought the Arts & Crafts ideas of William Morris to the Netherlands and devoted his career to book design and typography] with whom Jongert experimented with several printing techniques and discovered graphic design as his ideal art form.
¶ In 1923 Jongert rolled in a unique and long-term collaboration with the Van Nelle company, where he became head designer, a position he held until 1940. The Van Nelle company had an extremely modern approach towards advertising (they even commissioned Cassandre to do a poster) and Jongert created for the firm a recognizable image with clear shapes, powerful letters and primary colours, totally Dutch avant-garde in style, and with a strict and rigorous approach directly linked to De Stijl principles. The corporate identity he created has become a milestone in the design world.
¶ The lettering, however, is the driving force that ties it all together. The style is a straightforward set of plain, mono-linear, sans serif capitals in a style that just started to come into fashion in the late 1920s, early 1930s with the rise of functionalism and geometric type design. Yet, while these ideas were already thrown out there, its clever simplicity plus the systematic and cohesive way Jongert implemented his lettering was unusual at the time. The square and minimal construction of the forms allowed the letters to contract and expand to fit any situation, yet maintain a consistent and recognizable appearance throughout the Van Nelle line. ¶ Something we only recently have learned to appreciate is to see his hand crafted system amid the current advancements in variable-font technology, which offers a similar kind of flexibility to typeface designs. A quality that certainly placed him well ahead of its time.

What I particulary like about Jongert's original is the stuff that is going on in the lowercase set of the alphabet, which are those quirky lowercase letter inventions that are different from the more traditional modernist sans, but sadly the lowercase letters were pretty much never used in his works.

I created a simple PDF typeface specimen for those who want to see the high-resolution preview.

PDF SPECIMEN WAS DELETED

​​Thats all Folks ☚

☛ Cheers

FAKOS VARYTITAS - Futuristic Sci-Fi stencil design
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A Stencil letter with a rather unorthodox form.

The main concept is that of the Sci-Fi / Tech aesthetic. But the asymmetrics in its geometry, various custom build curves and incisions somewhat tune down the mechanical geometric tone of the letterforms, and introducing a slight more humanized touch to its rhythm. These non-traditional attributes making this more of a novel stencil typeface with a strong personality.

The typeface was inspired by space age tech.  Its a display style font that is perfect for when your project has to have that typical techy or futuristic aesthetic look. Its best used at large size, but it does work in smaller size format as well.

The font includes:
 • uppercase, lowercase & numerals
 • accented latin
 •diactritics
 • symbols & punctuation marks
 • ligatures
 • some glyph alternatives
 • ornamental decorative elements

All "lingual" characters are functional stencils, the only exceptions that aren't stenciled are the ornamental decorative symbols and dingbats.

Cheers

ARS NOUVEAUX - Art Nouveau inspired display typeface
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A personal digital reimagination of the lettering style by "Charles Rennie Mackintosh" (1868-1928), a pioneer of the "Glasgow School of Art" and so called "Arts & Crafts" movement.
His distinctive style of lettering has been seen many revisions, revivals, reimaginations and inspired designs alike over the years, and has evolved into a broad collection of available fonts.
This basic stylistic lettering concept from Mackintosh sort-of losely funcioned as the structural guiding principle for the creation of "Ars-Nouveaux".  
This FontStruction is an experimentation into creating similar flavored, but still unique letterforms within that same design framework.
 
First I started to layout the overall basic asymmetrical core geometry from a set of custom rectangles, half arc's and slants for each of the letters bare skeleton shape. Once I completed the full set of 36 glyphs [a/z, 0/9] These basic shaped were then further modified into more sophisticated finalized letterforms.

Caps-only, but with many alternates, accompanied by a set of ornate initials.

Hope you like it,

Cheers

ZEPHTON (Pro) — 70's future retro / sci-fi style typeface
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[ INTRODUCTION ]
A revival of the Sci-Fi lettering used by the “Atlantic Toy Company” for their “Galaxy Serie”. A science fiction themed toy line that was manifactured from 1978 to the early 1980s.

The lettering seen on their packeging uses a modified and filled version of a typeface called Paperclip Contour, which was designed by Dutch graphic designer Ad Werner, and was issued by Mecanorma in 1973. There is very little information provided on the web in regard to the original typeface by Werner. And even fewer images. Nothing that show a complete character set, only FontInUse submissions. But taken from the research I conducted I can safely conclude that the original Paperclip Contour typeface has just one style, which is outlined, and that it includes a lower case(a-z)  letterset with numerals and just a had full of symbols and punctuation.

That being said, this actually is the second revision I did for the lettering. The innitial first version had a super basic character set, as well as a couple of mistakes included alongside some compromises in respect to certain glyphs. This was due to the limited knowledge I had in regard to the use of the FS-editor at that time. So the font wasn't 100% accurate. This newer version correct most of the inconsistencies that were present in the older version.

Due to the incomplete resource material on the original Paperclip Contour by Werner I can't check accuracy of this newer version. But I think that apart from the thicker weight in Zephton its 99% accurate.

Where the older version ran short by a lot, this new revision in fact can qualify as a full font, with everything from numerals, symbols, puntuation marks as well as accented letters for more Latin languages. And ever some glyph alternatives. Making this much more of a functional font.

[ THE FONTSTRUCTION ]
The font is a “Unicase” style typeface that has only “Minuscules” included. There are glyph alternate forms for several letters as well as a secondary set of numeral figures. These characters are located in the Unicode blocks for “Halfwidth And Fullwidth Forms” and “Private Use Area 1”

There is also a full  (a-z, 0-9)  alphanumeric set with “Contour Outlined” glyph alternative forms, which is located in the “Private Use Area 2”

The font saw a major update that tied everything together, and sort of finalizes the font for proper use.

Several characters have received minor adjustments in order to find a balanced harmonic distribution of typeset material. Also several improvements have been made to the overall shape and form of various characters. In addition to that numerous new characters been designed, expanding the character set even further.
Work also continued in the metric department, building the kerning table, that contains 2368 stored kerning pairs so far. Spacing was reduced by 50% to tighten the letter fit significantly. To round things up and convert it into a more functional typeface some of the characters were rearranged and/or relocated to different Unicode blocks.
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[ CONTOUR OUTLINED GLYPH ALTERNATIVE FORMS ]
The contour outline glyph alternative forms are not 100% accurate conversions of their solid counterparts. This due to minor design difficulties that simply made it impossible to fully execute it at its current size and with this thin stroke weight. The deformities are simply the result of a lack in fully smoothened stroke contours in some of the transitions from diagonal to curved parts. These flaws are minute, and mostly only noticable at large size rendering, but nonetheless present. In small to medium size text these imperfections are  hardly visible, and pose no real problem. Anyway.. the contour outlined glyphs are still very close approximations nonetheless, just so that it happens to be with a small number of tiny imperfections.

As a direct result of this the two sets with glyphs do not fully match and therefor not seemlessly overlap.  

This can be ignored for most part in the majority of the font's application, but it does create two important limitations:

1) Contour outlined glyphs are unsuitable for vector path outline rendering when the stroke alignment is set to "Outside" (Configured like that with threshold for the corner point angle set to sharp these imperfections in the glyph contours can generate spikey disruptions to appear in the stroke rendering).
— So this configuration should be avoided.

2) The two styles are unsuitable (or incompatible) with stacked “multi-layer" overlay text compositions.
— Simply due to the fact the two variations aren't a 100% true match.

They do on the other hand, combine perfectly side-by-side in text composition.
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[ MORE LIKE THIS ]

There is also this other FontStruction that was inspired by Ad Werner's font Paperclip Contour, called Neue Werner Paperclip, this one was crafted by fellow memberfunk_king

Thats it for now...

Cheers