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Keep Calm

Keep Calm

by K-Type
Individual Styles from $20.00
Complete family of 8 fonts: $80.00
Keep Calm Font Family was designed by Keith Bates and published by K-Type. Keep Calm contains 8 styles and family package options.

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About Keep Calm Font Family


Keep Calm is a family of fonts developed from the now famous World War 2 poster that was designed in 1939 but never issued, then rediscovered in 2000. As well as the original Keep Calm font, the medium weight of the poster, new weights are now available – Keep Calm Book (regular weight), Heavy and Light – and each weight comes with a complimentary italic. Version 2.0 (2017) is a comprehensive update which consists of numerous refinements and improvements across all weights. The family now contains a full complement of Latin Extended-A characters, Welsh diacritics and Irish dotted consonants. The four italics have been optically corrected with revised, ‘true italic’ forms of a and f. The crown motif from the top of the Keep Calm poster is located at the plus minus ± and section § keystrokes (Alt 0177 and Alt 0167 on Windows). The lowercase g follows the Gill/Johnston eyeglass model, but also included is an alternative, single-story g at the Alt G keystroke (Alt 0169 on a Windows keyboard), the normal location of the copyright symbol which has been relocated elsewhere in the fonts. An alternative lowercase t, without the curved wedge cutaway, is provided at the Alt T (dagger) keystroke (Alt 0134 on Windows). When I first saw the Keep Calm and Carry On poster, I wrongly assumed the letters to be Gill Sans. Recent research at the National Archive by Dr. Bex Lewis of Manchester Metropolitan University has revealed that the original poster was hand drawn by the illustrator and painter, Ernest Wallcousins. The Gill Sans influence is apparent, in the R particularly, the M’s perfectly pointed vertex is redolent of Johnston’s Underground, and the most anomalous character, the C, resembles the ‘basic lettering’ of engineers that provided the vernacular sources for the Gotham typeface. Developing the Keep Calm typeface has been an exercise in extrapolation; an intriguing challenge to build a whole, high quality font family based on the twelve available capitals of the Keep Calm poster, and on similar lettering from the other two posters in the original series. This has required the creation of new lowercase letters that are believably 1939; that maintain the influence of Gill and Johnston while also hinting at the functional imperative of a wartime drawing office. Wallcousins’s lettering balanced intuitive human qualities and the pure pleasure of drawing elegant contemporary characters, against an underlying geometry of ruled lines, perfect circles, 45° terminals, and a requirement for no-nonsense clarity.

Designers: Keith Bates

Publisher: K-Type

Foundry: K-Type

Design Owner: K-Type

MyFonts debut: Jun 21, 2011

Keep Calm

About K-Type

K-Type is a small, independent type foundry based in Manchester England, offering a unique range of high quality fonts which are modestly and simply priced for designers, small businesses and large organisations.In addition to creating new typefaces resulting from formal experimentation, many K-Type fonts show the influence of inspirational artists and designers, many exploring the mix of insular and eclectic that has forged the typographical landscape of Britain and America.K-Type is also keen to make affordable fonts from styles which possess cultural currency or an existing social presence, generally redrawn to include comprehensive character sets containing a full complement of Latin Extended-A glyphs. New, previously unavailable weights and italics are often designed and added.

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