My hip collegian daughter is always pushing me to make fonts which she thinks will fit the design trends of the day, which seems to come down to fonts which would look good in the monogram on the side of the Adams Family’s hearse, on an Ed Hardy t-shirt or tattooed on the back of a contestant on Tool Academy. Ok, that’s the extent of my second-hand contemporary cultural literacy.

We've released several new fonts since I last visited Typophile, so here's a quick update.

Aylward Font

Once again I have fallen under the influence of my fashion conscious teenage daughter, who tells me that I absolutely must produce more "shabby chic" fonts like the trendy scrapbookers and hip fashion label designers use. On showing her examples this turns out to mean more circus style fonts with wide ascenders and decoration. We did this dance once before the the Cascade font and she wasn't entirely satisfied. It was too Art Deco and not crude enough looking.

Too many years ago to count, I was lucky enough to attend St. Albans School in Washington, DC. It's a great school with a rich history and an association with the National Cathedral and the rich cultural heritage of the Episcopal Church and many of the traditions of the English public schools. It's a school with a lot of character and a reputation for shaping future leaders in politics and the arts.

Rockne is based on samples of mid-20th century wood type in a style which was clearly an influence on the poster lettering of the 1960s as demonstrated in our Butterfield, Harbinger and Pantagruel.

I have to say that the interface for writing here on Typophile leaves something to be desired, so you'll have to do without the outstanding graphics and thrilling video clips which accompany the version of this article over on fontcraft.com, but the gist of it is this...

One of the artists whose works we’ve been acquiring actively in the last couple of years is influential arts and crafts era illustrator, author and designer Walter Crane. Crane’s childrens books, illustrated classics and collections of Shakespearean woodcuts are outstanding examples of the best of work of the artist as craftsman and are characterized by both technical skill and a unique retrospective vision which typefies the best of the late 19th century Arts and Crafts movement.

Tangle is a fun font which I drew by hand to have the look of twining vines, reminiscent of a grape arbor in the winter. The inspiration is from my front gate which is twined with an endless tangle of mustang grape vines. It was designed on a whim, but turned out pretty well. It has a full upper and lower case character set, plus numbers and punctuation and special characters. Maybe some clever vintner will notice it and put it to use on a wine label. You can try out the free demo version of Tangle for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the upper case characters.

Damariscotta is basically a text font with embellished capital letters which can stand on their own for decorative titles, or used with the lower case letters for text or titles. It's got a certain panache, reminiscent of both decorative Victorian or Art Nouveau lettering like some of those found in our Art Nouveau package, unexpectedly combined with some characteristics of Celtic lettering like the more decorative Gaelic fonts in our Celtic package. I named it Damariscotta after a region in Maine which attracted a lot of Scottish settlers in the 18th century. You can see a sample or get the demo version to try out at www.fontcraft.com.