Web FontFonts: Display

FF Advert is an idiosyncratic and good-natured sans serif family for text in four weights. Its design is an homage to Metro, W. A. Dwiggins’ humanized geometric sans. The family is appreciated by graphic designers for including two unique lowercase ‘a’ forms in each font: single-story and double-story versions. The typeface is the work of Dutch designer Just van Rossum. A sister design exists... Read More

The FF Archian family came from György Szönyei’s desire to create a geometric font using vertical and horizontal elements and no curves. FF Archian Normal was the first arrival of the family, the product of playful manipulation of form and function. The other weights were produced as variations on a theme, each with a different inspiration: architecture, painting, and fine arts. In 2010 the... Read More

Jan Middendorp described FF Brokenscript in his book Dutch Type (2004) thus: “It is a study in Fraktur, or blackletter, possibly inspired by Gerrit Noordzij’s extensive writings on the subject.” One of the first blackletter typefaces in the FontFont library, the design takes cues from the early textura scribal tradition. The letterforms have been somewhat updated however, especially the... Read More

In your mind, you know what the letters should look like. That’s why FF Fontesque’s funhouse-mirror–style distortion is so successful at disorienting and drawing in the unsuspecting onlooker. The typeface keeps it loose with extreme proportions, unpredictable character axis, a bouncing baseline, and wild variation of stroke weight. The designer, Nick Shinn, argues that all the irregularity only... Read More

In your mind, you know what the letters should look like. That’s why FF Fontesque’s funhouse-mirror–style distortion is so successful at disorienting and drawing in the unsuspecting onlooker. The typeface keeps it loose with extreme proportions, unpredictable character axis, a bouncing baseline, and wild variation of stroke weight. The designer, Nick Shinn, argues that all the irregularity only... Read More

FF Folk is a small series of typefaces drawn from lettering that artist Ben Shahn used in his paintings and lithographs. The Ben Shahn Folk Alphabet was originally created as lettering in 1940, and in 1995 was produced as digital type by Maurizio Osti and Jane Patterson with the blessing of Mrs. Bernarda Shahn, approval from Ben Shahn’s estate, and under license from VAGA (New York). “Lettering... Read More

Just as popular as the digital typewriter face FF Trixie are those in the FF Instant Types series: FF Confidential, FF Dynamoe, FF Flightcase, FF Karton, and FF Stamp Gothic. Named after the places each comes from, these fonts feature familiar character sets from everyday letters and figures all around us: packaging, flight cases, children’s stamp boxes, Dymo tape labelers. We see them every... Read More

In FF Mach, all curved lines have been replaced by straight ones, some of which are set at angles. This results in a rather technical appearance, and one that’s contemporary in feeling. The family has 18 styles in all: six weights in three widths. FF Mach’s first sketches were drawn in 2004, when a colleague of Dziedzic’s planned a new Polish arts and culture magazine. He asked Dziedzic for a... Read More

FF Magda is a grunge family designed by Swiss-born designer Cornel Windlin. “I intended it to be a sister font to Erik van Blokland’s very popular FF Trixie, in order to offer a less nostalgic typewriter face to designers with an appetite for Banal Everyday Typography,” wrote Windlin. FF Magda isn’t a lazy effort, however. The family includes no less than nine levels of boldness or ink bleed,... Read More

While a senior in college, Christian Schwartz worked for a clothing company, designing t-shirts and labels. The aesthetic of one of the lines mixed industrial and military looks, which called for a lot of stencil type. He picked up some stencils at a hardware store and digitized the characters, since other companies regularly ripped off prints they designed with readily available fonts. In this... Read More

One of Berlin’s must-visit cultural stops is the Prater, a beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg, a district in the eastern part of Berlin. The Prater easily has one of the most unique graphic identities in the city, completely handmade by artist-illustrator Henning Wagenbreth. The alphabets created by Wagenbreth became the starting point for a refreshing type family, FF Prater. To convincingly... Read More

Providence was first drawn in 1987 to set lines in a comic book series – FF Providence Sans for the dialog, and its serif companion for running narrative. In 1994 the typefaces were revisited, adding weights and a set of dingbats, and named after the designer’s home town in Rhode Island, USA.

Providence was first drawn in 1987 to set lines in a comic book series – FF Providence Sans for the dialog, and its serif companion for running narrative. In 1994 the typefaces were revisited, adding weights and a set of dingbats, and named after the designer’s home town in Rhode Island, USA.

Based on square forms, FF QType successfully walks the difficult line between pure geometry and legibility. Achaz Reuss used his years of type design experience to flesh out a concept that could have been, in the hands of a student or amateur, a much less useful result. Five subfamilies make up the whole (Compressed, Condensed, Semi Extended, Extended and Square) each in five weights (Extra... Read More

FF Signa is a characteristically Danish design, rooted in architectural lettering rather than book typography. Originally created for signage—hence the name—FF Signa is now a typographic family with three widths. All weights include italics, small caps, and several styles of figures. Because of the quality of this “vernacular-lettering-turned-typeface” conversion, FF Signa received a Danish... Read More

FF Signa is a characteristically Danish design, rooted in architectural lettering rather than book typography. Originally created for signage—hence the name—FF Signa is now a typographic family with three widths. All weights include italics, small caps, and several styles of figures. Because of the quality of this “vernacular-lettering-turned-typeface” conversion, FF Signa received a Danish... Read More

FF Soul is the creation of Amsterdam’s Donald Beekman. A musician, DJ, and chief of an underground record label, Beekman also develops branding and packaging for his colleagues in the entertainment business. FF Soul evolved from a logo he drew for Dutch club/house label Hardsoul. A brash, meaty face, FF Hardsoul has hard edges and a rock-and-roll feel. FF Softsoul’s rounded corners show the... Read More

What became FF TradeMarker was conceived as a “remix” of the Serpentine Bold typeface. After incorporating the proto-design into countless record sleeves, flyers, and logos that he designed, the Berlin-based designer Critzla finished the family and named it FF TradeMarker. This is a typeface for building brand identities. The original Serpentine inspiration – without its vestigial serifs – can... Read More

FF Typestar, from Steffen Sauerteig, part of the eBoy design collective, is one of the most sophisticated typewriter-inspired fonts in the FontFont library. Although FF Typestar is essentially a geometric typeface, it is still subtly refined. The small system includes two families. The first is a typical font quartet: regular, italic, black, and black italic. These offer everything needed for... Read More