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Alberto Milli

Grosseto, Italy-based designer (b. 1973) of the Etruscan simulation font AM False Etruscan (2003).

Klingspor link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Alphabetum
[Juan-José Marcos García]

Juan-José Marcos García (b. Salamanca, Spain, 1963) is a professor of classics at the University of Plasencia in Spain. He has developed one of the most complete Unicode fonts named ALPHABETUM Unicode for linguistics and classical languages (classical&medieval Latin, ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberic, Celtiberic, Gothic, Runic, Modern Greek, Cyrillic, Devanagari-based languages, Old&Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, IPA, Ogham, Ugaritic, Old Persian, Old Church Slavonic, Brahmi, Glagolitic, Ogham, ancient Greek Avestan, Kharoshti, Old Norse, Old Icelandic, Old Danish and Old Nordic in general, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Phoenician, Cypriot, Linear B with plans for Glagolitic). This font has over 5000 glyphs, and contains most characters that concern classicists (rare symbols, signs for metrics, epigraphical symbols, "Saxon" typeface for Old English, etcetera). A demo font can be downloaded [see also Lucius Hartmann's place]. His Greek font Grammata (2002) is now called Ellenike.

He also created a package of fonts for Latin paleography (medieval handwriting on parchments): Capitalis Elegans, Capitalis Rustica, Capitalis Monumentalis, Antiqua Cursiva Romana, Nova Cursiva Romana (2014), Uncialis, Semiuncialis, Beneventana Minuscula, Visigothica Minuscula, Luxoviensis Minuscula, Insularis Minuscula, Insularis Majuscula, Carolingia Minuscula, Gothica Textura Quadrata, Gothica Textura Prescissa, Gothica Rotunda, Gothica Bastarda, Gothica Cursiva, Bastarda Anglicana (2014) and Humanistica Antiqua. PDF entitled Fonts For Latin Palaeography (2008-2014), in which Marcos gives an enjoyable historic overview.

Alphabetum is not Marcos's only excursion into type design. In 2011, he created two simulation fonts called Sefarad and Al Andalus which imitate Hebrew and Arabic calligraphy, respectively.

Cyrillic OCS (2012) is a pair of Latin fonts that emulate Old Church Slavonic (old Cyrillic).

In 2013, he created Cuneus, a cuneiform simulation typeface.

Paleographic fonts for Greek (2014) has ten fonts designed by Marcos: Angular Uncial, Biblical Uncial, Coptic Uncial, Papyrus Uncial, Round Uncial, Slavonic Uncial, Sloping Uncial, Minuscule IX, Minuscule XI and Minuscule XV. These fonts are representative of the main styles of Greek handwriting used during the Classical World and Middle Ages on papyrus and parchments. There is also a short manual of Greek Paleography (71 pages) which explains the development of Greek handwriting from the fourth century B.C. to the invention of printing with movable type in the middle of the fifteenth A.D. He wrote a text book entitled History of Greek Typography: From the Invention of Printing to the Digital Age (in Spanish; second edition, 2018). See also here and here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

American Philological Association
[Donald Mastronarde]

Association which published a free Greek Opentype font, KadmosU (2005). New Athena Unicode (2004-2010) is also free: New Athena Unicode is a freeware multilingual font distributed by the American Philological Association. It follows the latest version (5.1) of the Unicode standard and includes characters for English and Western European languages, polytonic Greek, Coptic, Old Italic, and Demotic Egyptian transliteration (and Arabic transliteration), as well as metrical symbols and other characters used by classical scholars. New Athena Unicode is a "smart font" that includes OpenType ligatures allowing the display of composed characters not recognized by Unicode but needed by scholars. I am not sure that I am right, but the Greekkeys pafge makes me believe that Donald Mastronarde (a Professor a UC Berkeley) of the American Philological Association is responsible for the creation and upkeep of New Athena Unicode. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Archaeological Fonts (by Bonneville Electronics)

The was a commercial site located in West Clinton, Utah, that was run by Scott T. Smith from Clinton, Utah. It had Mayan, hieroglyphs, cuneiform, Syriac, Etruscan, old Greek, old Hebrew and archeological fonts as well as Native American dingbats. [Google] [More]  ⦿

archaic
[Peter R. Wilson]

Peter R. Wilson's metafont code (2000-2005) for many archaic languages: Proto-Semitic (16bc), Phoenician (10bc), Greek (6bc), Greek (4bc), Etruscan (8bc), Futharc (Anglo-Saxon, 6ad), Hieroglyphics (30bc: the hieroglf provides a Metafont version of about 80 Egyptian hieroglyphs from Serge Rosmorduc's comprehensive hieroglyph package, see here for a type 1 version called Archaic-Poor-Mans-Hieroglyphs (2005)), Cypriot (9bc). Peter also developed metafont fonts for bookhands. The Archaic ollection contains fonts to represent Aramaic, Cypriot, Etruscan, Greek of the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Linear A, Linear B, Nabatean old Persian, the Phaistos disc, Phoenician, proto-Semitic, runic, South Arabian Ugaritic and Viking scripts. The bundle also includes a small font for use in phonetic transcription of the archaic writings. The bundle's own directory includes a font installation map file for the whole collection. The authors are Peter R. Wilson, Uwe Zimmermann and Apostolos Syropoulos. See here for the type 1 fonts Archaic-OandS (2005) and Archaic-OandS-Italic (2005). Here we find type 1 versions called Square-Capitals (2005) and Square-Capitals-Bold (2005). He also made the type 1 typefaces Archaic-Etruscan (2005), Archaic-Runic (2005) and Archaic-ProtoSemitic (2005). Further packages of type 1 and metafont fonts: Archaic-Aramaic (2005), South Arabian (2005, for the South Arabian script, in use for about 1000 years from roughly 600 BC; based on a metafont by Alan Stanier), Archaic-Linear-B (2005: a syllabary used in the Bronze Age (15bc) for writing Mycenaean Greek), Archaic-Nabatean (2005: the Nabatean script used in the Middle East between the fourth centuries BC and AD), Archaic-Old-Persian (2005: the Old Persian Cuneiform script in use between about 500 to 350 BC.), Archaic-Ugaritic-Cuneiform (2005: the Ugaritic Cuniform script in use about 1300 BC), Archaic-Cypriot (1999-2005). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Dave Bastian

Dave Bastian is from Utah and graduated from Brigham Young University. Dave Bastian's free fonts: Etruscan, Fancy Face, Frankie (Frankenstein font), Korohanza, Noodle Calligraphic, Noodle Script (upright script), Noodle Shaded, SixtySeven, Startling, Stone-Age, Weehah.

Astound Dings and Bloopty (2002) were published at Garagefonts.

FontShop link. Klingspor link. Fontspace link. Dafont link. Abstract Fonts link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Donald Mastronarde
[American Philological Association]

[More]  ⦿

Evolution Publishing and Manufacturing

Commercial site (Evolution Publishing and Manufacturing, Huntingdon Valley, PA) offering four old Italian Scripts: Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Volscian. 15 USD per font. Mac only. [Google] [More]  ⦿

FYI Handwriting Fonts
[Ilene Strivzer]

Dead link. Ilene Strivzer introduced ITC's handwriting fonts. This is not an article, but just advertising. The fonts: Zemke Hand, Cyberkugel, Berranger Hand, Weber Hand, Etruscan, Trackpad, Django, Deelirious, Grimshaw Hand, Bradley Hand, Kristen, Pablo, Smack, Viner Hand, Samuel. [Google] [More]  ⦿

gzb

Designer of Etruscan mid/late Bold (2001). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Ilene Strivzer
[FYI Handwriting Fonts]

[More]  ⦿

Italic Alphabets

Languages which used Italic alphabets include Italic (Oscan, Umbrian, Volscian, Picene, Siculian), Venetic, Illyrian (Messapic), Celtic (Lepontic) and non-Indo-European (Etruscan, Rhaetic, Sicanian, Lemnian). All came from Western Greek script and were used in ancient Italy. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jack Kilmon
[Jack's Scribal and Epigraphic Fonts]

[More]  ⦿

Jack's Scribal and Epigraphic Fonts
[Jack Kilmon]

Houston's Jack Kilmon designed many archaic and epigraphic TrueType fonts. Free for academics. His site also has an archive of some fonts by Reinhold Kainhofer (RK Ancient Fonts), and some Coptic, Hebrew, Hieroglyphic and Greek fonts. A list of his creations: Early Phoenician (8th century BC), Moabite/Mesha Stele Epigraphic, Lachish Ostraca Cursive Palaeohebrew, Elephantine Papyrus Cursive, Jack's Early Aramaic (10th c. BCE), Nabataean Aramaic, Jack's Samaritan, Jack's Siloam Inscription, Jack's Dead Sea Scroll Scribal (or DSS Scribal) (based on Great Isaiah Scroll), Jack's Habakkuk Scribal (based on Pesher Habakkuk), Jack's Meissner Papyrus Cursive, Dead Sea Scroll Scribal, Latin Epigraphic, Roman Rustica (Capitalis Rustica), Latin bookhand from 1st to 6th century, C. Sinaiticus Uncial Greek, Early Greek Epigraphic, Greek Minuscule with Ligatures, Carolingian Minuscule, Insular Minuscule, early Gothic, Gothic Textura Quadrata, C. Sinaiticus Uncial Greek, Early Greek Epigraphic, Greek Minuscule with Ligatures, Jack's Etruscan. Essay on the history of writing. And an archive of Greek, Coptic, Hebrew and hieroglyphic fonts.

Dafont link. Marc Smith is not kind in his critique of Kilmon, who he calls an amateur (page 65). He deplores (page 69) that most letters, o, b, p and y included, have the same height in Kilmon's work. [Google] [More]  ⦿

James Kass

Ripon, CA-based designer of Code2000, Code2001 and Code2002, free Unicode fonts. The shareware font Code2000 has 36000 glyphs, including Japanese and all European languages. He has free downloadable Unicode charts, info on Unicode in Netscape/HTML, the freeware Ol Cemet' (or JKSantal) font. His free Code2001 includes Old Persian Cuneiform, Deseret, Tengwar, Cirth, Old Italic, Gothic, Aegean Numbers, Cypriot Syllabary, Pollard Script, and Ugaritic. James Kass is located in Lake Isabella, CA. Discussion by the typophiles (with complaints about the wide spacing, the letters g, 2, J, and other typographic matters). The font is the default at the JSTOR site.

Fontspace link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jogi Weichware

Berlin and Frankfurt-based company which published these fonts for ancient Middle Eastern scripts between 1990 and 2001: TitusAncientNeareastNormal, TitusArabic-Farsi, TitusArmenianNormal, TitusAsomtavruliMrglovani, TitusAsomtavruliMrglovani, TitusAsomtavruliNuskhuri, TitusBaltic, TitusBibleGothic, TitusBuzuku, TitusChristianEastNormal, TitusCyrillicNormal, TitusECLINGMxedruli-Normal, TitusECLINGTranscription-Bold, TitusECLINGTranscription-Italic, TitusECLINGTranscription, TitusEastEuropeanNormal, TitusGreekNormal, TitusGreekReverseNormal, TitusHebrew-Normal, TitusHebrewNormal, TitusIndoIranianNormal, TitusIndologyNormal, TitusKroatianGlagolicaNormal, TitusManichean, TitusMiddleIranian-Normal, TitusMxedruliNormal, TitusNearEastNormal, TitusNuskhaKhutsuri, TitusOghamNormal, TitusOldGeorgian, TitusOldPersianNormal, TitusOldPersianNormal, TitusOscanInscriptionsNormal, TitusRoundGlagolicaNormal, TitusRunicNormal, TitusSlavonicNormal, TitusSogdianIntNormal, TitusSyriacEstrangelo, TitusSyriacNestorian, TitusSyriacNestorianNormal, TitusSyriacSerto, TitusSyriacSertoNormal, TitusTaanaNormal, TitusUmbrianInscriptionsNormal, TitusWesternNormal. Downloadable here. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Journal of Biblical Studies

Alternate URL. Archive: Altrussisch, Altrussisch-Bold, Altrussisch-BoldItalic, Altrussisch-Italic, Web-Hebrew-AD, BSTGreek, BSTHebrew, Coptic-Normal, Web-Hebrew-Monospace, Cyrillic, Cyrillic-Bold-Italic, Cyrillic-Bold, Cyrillic-Normal-Italic, DSS-Scribal-Normal, Elephantine-Aramaic, Etruscan-Epigraphic-Normal, Netextmo, Netextpro, Greek, Hebrew, IluInternet, Koine-Medium, l562-Minuscule-Normal, Lachish-Bold, Latin-Uncial-Normal, Linear-B, Nippur-Sans-Regular, Macedonian-Ancient, Meroitic---Demotic, Meroitic---Hieroglyphics, Nabataean-Aramaic, Nahkt, Paleo-Hebrew-NormalA, Phoinike, Qumran, RD-Akkadian1, RK-Ugaritic-Transscript, Rashi, SPAchmim, SPAtlantis, SPDamascus, SPEdessa, SPEzra, SPIonic, SPTiberian, Schwaben-Alt-Bold, Sinaiticus-Greek-Uncial, Sorawin-Plain, Ugarit. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Juan-José Marcos García
[Alphabetum]

[More]  ⦿

Leo Colalillo

Milan, Italy-based type designer who graduated from IED in 2007 and attended the Master of Type Design program at Politecnico di Milano. He has been working in the world of visual communication since then for clients such as Chianti Classico, Moretti, Amnesty International and UAAR. In 2019, he started teaching at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in Rome.

His early typefaces include the hand-printed Peake, Grill Trump (2012: a typeface derived from Gill Sans together with Valentina Aufiero, Francesca Sperti, Natale Ventre and Alejandra Sepulveda at Politecnico di Milano), BetaQin, and the heavy angular display typeface Grosser (2013), which was earlier called Größe (2012). This octagonal typeface covers Greek and is loaded with opentype features.

In 2018, he designed the ultra-condensed blackletter typeface Guglia.

In 2020, he released the all caps anthroposophic / lapidary typeface Caudine. It was inspired by the Oscan alphabet used by the Samnites, an pre-roman Italic culture from south-central Italy. Home page. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Memexikon

American designer who created the pictograph font PROTObyte (2004), which contains dingbats from Linear B, Indus Valley Script, Snake River, Cretan, Elamite, Iberian and Coptic. He also made Glitch Millennium Serif (2004). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Old Italic

The script of some ancient (8th to 1st centuries BC) dialects of Central Italy, which are a subdivision of the western group of Indo-European languages spoken in Italy. These dialects included Etruscan, Faliscan, Middle Adriatic, North Picene, Oscan, South Picene, and Umbrian. The Old Italic script dialects show some similarity to Celtic and, to a lesser degree, Germanic. The Germanic runic alphabet was derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Paleofonts V. 2
[Vasil Gligorov]

Vasil Gligorov from Skopje, Macedonia, has a 16MB file with almost 300 truetype fonts that represent 30 ancient scripts: Luwian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Runic, Syriac, Glagolitic, OCS Cyrillic, Persian Cuneiform, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Demotic, Linear A (Complex signs), Linear B, Proto-Greek, Ancient and Medieval Greek, Ancient and Medieval Latin, Gothic, Etruscan, Oscan, Phoenician, Galilean, Celto-Iberian, Coptic, Meroitic, Cypriot, Vina, Ancient Hebrew, Samaritan, Sanskrit, Ugaritic, Manichean, Ogham, Umbrian, Asomtavruli Mrglovani, Siloam type-Inscription. Alternate URL. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Peter R. Wilson
[archaic]

[More]  ⦿

Peter Rempel
[PR Fonts]

[MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

PR Fonts
[Peter Rempel]

Peter Rempel (b. 1958) is a Winnipeg-based calligrapher. Nice graphic about classical roman types. He designed some exquisite shareware fonts: PR Uncial Creepy (2010), PR Agamemnon Bold (2008), PR-Uncial (2003), PR-UncialAltCapsExtended, PR-UncialAlternateCapitals (1998), Demo-ofGabrielCondensed, Demo-ofGabrielRegular, Demo-version:Gabrielextended, PR-CelticNarrow (1998), Magickal Signs, PR Runes (2000), PR Rune Stones (2000), Pi Rho Runestones (1998), PR Astrological (1998), PR Compass Rose (2007), PR Viking (2007; +Alternates) and Pirho Herakles (1998, an Etruscan-style or Greek simulation font). In preparation: PR Alchemyst, PR Snaggly, PR Monk's Holiday.

He writes about himself: educated in music composition and visual design. In his family home, there were many wall plaques with German Bible verses, rendered in a variety of gothic and fraktur lettering styles. In the 1980s he discovered the art of calligraphy, first through the speedball lettering textbook, and later by joining the calligraphers Guild of Manitoba. He has studied a variety of lettering styles, but his strongest interest is in the letter styles of the Middle Ages, starting with the German Fraktur styles he knew from childhood, and extending back, into uncials, runic shapes, and the Classical Roman Letter. The Chancery cursive, or Italic hand, which to many people is synonymous with calligraphy, never held much interest for him. He released his first shareware fonts in 1996.

In 2010, he went partially commercial. His first pay font is PR Pointers (2010, an arrows font).

In 2011, he designed the commercial typefaces PR Mapping and PR Stars.

In 2012, he published PR Arco (arcs for framing curved lines of text, in a style common on Victorian posters and almanac covers) and PR Hydra (a Greek simulation font).

Typefaces from 2013 include PR Snowflakes 01, PR Bramble Wood 1 and 2, PR Valendoodle 01 (Valentine's Day ornaments), PR Swirlies (in series numbered 01 through 13), PR Swirlies Frames, PR HallowDoodles (Halloween dingbats), PR Nouveau Ornaments (art nouveau), PR Viking (a rune simulation face), PR Foxtail 01, PR Foxtail 02, PR Scrolls 03, 04 and 05 (2014), PR Sprucewood (2014), PR Swells One (2014), PR Xmas Doodles (2014), PR Hearts Take Wing 01, PR Mysticon 01 (star dingbats), PR Pointers 01 (arrows), PR Valknut (Norse god symbolism), PR Scrolls, PR Uncial (1998), PR Dim Sum (brush face), PR Columban (a Celtic uncial, named after Irish monk Columbanus), PR Columbian.

Typefaces from 2014: PR Cauldron (a scary Celtic style font), Vanaheim (a flared display typeface influenced by Nordic runes).

Typefaces from 2015: PR Hallow Doodles 03, PR Ex Cathedra (Trajan capitals).

MyFonts link. MyFonts foundry link. Klingspor link. Fontsy link. Dafont link. Castles&Crypts link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Romworx

Cybapee's new initiative: an informative page on Roman writing, its history, its influence, and the present day fonts that attempt to recreate it. Contributed fonts include Alfabetix (by Apostrophe), Etruscan Script (by Gabor), Roma Cesare, MKapitalis Rustica, MKwadrata, and Odoaker (by Manfred Klein). [Google] [More]  ⦿

Shapes for Cash
[Timothy Donaldson]

British calligrapher, signwriter, lettering artist, and type designer. He teaches typography at Stafford College and is a Research Fellow at the University of Lincoln. His typefaces:

  • At ITC: ITC Cyberkugel, ITC Digital Woodcuts, ITC Farmhaus Normal, ITC Farmhaus Not So Normal (he says that Farmhaus is where Neil Young meets Paul Renner), Flight (1995), Pneuma, Scruff, Spooky, Telegram, Trackpad, ITC Humana Serif, ITC Humana Script Light, Medium, and Bold, John Handy, ITC Klee, ITC Talking Drum (1990s, interpreted in 2007 by Nick Curtis as Monkey Business), ITC Musclehead, ITC Riptide, Ruach, Ulysses, ITC Airstream, ITC Angryhog, Etruscan, Green, ITC Jellybaby, Neo Neo, Orange (1995, a liquid font).
  • At Letraset: Pink (Peter Hanley's review of Pink), Uffington, TwangLetPlain (scribbly).
  • At FontFont: Fancy Writing (or: FF Fancy, 1996).
  • At Adobe: Immi 505, Postino, Banshee, Coriander.
  • At the Indian Type Foundry: Rozha One (2014, free Google web font). This is a heavy didone typeface with large x-height, high contrast, and a harmonious balance between its Devanagari (designed by Tim Donaldson and Jyotish Sonowal) and Latin (designed by Shiva Nallaperumal). Github link.
  • At his own type foundry Shapes for Cash (est. ca. 2018): Donaldsans Code (2019: a programming font), Billy Mozz (2019), Amadeo (Timothy: this is a 20-year old design that won a prize in a Morisawa competition in the 1990s. It is a deliberately crude, unevenly weighted set of simulated incisions that now attempts to challenge the chocolate-box hegemony of perfect Instagraphy, and maybe to invoke the spirit of Imre Reiner), Cowgirl, Hipsterpotamus (a chubby puppy, a chunky monkey, a bestially bloated beauty of corpulent cuteness), Pointyhead (an exercise in absurdity; to create the most atrociously spiky, thorny blackletter; to give it a set of roman uppers along with brutal fraktur majuscules).
  • Other fonts: Cult.
He runs Kingink.

At ATypI 2004 in Prague, he spoke about The world's even bigger Hamburgefonts. At ATypI 2008 in St. Petersburg, he spoke about the resurrection of the pencil. He states in the abstract: During research for my recently published book, "Shapes for sounds", I investigated the Glagolitic alphabet created by the brothers Cyril and Methodius. This alphabet was the mother of Cyrillic. I learned to write the letters, an activity that took on a life of its own and led to a body of interpretation bordering on the obsessive. My talk will focus on the history, development, and subsequent abandonment of the Glagolitic alphabet and will show the new drawings, sculptures, scripts and typefaces I have produced as a result of this investigation. Speaker at ATypI 2010 in Dublin. Speaker at ATypI 2011 in Reykjavik.

In 2012, he won the Akashi award in the Latin category of the Morisawa Type Design Competition for Jara (a fat signage script).

Klingspor link. Linotype link.

View Timothy Donaldson's typefaces. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Timothy Donaldson
[Shapes for Cash]

[MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Unicode Font Guide For Free--Libre Open Source Operating Systems

A guide to Unicode-based fonts and script projects that are ideal for free/libre/open source (FLOSS) operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. Maintained by Ed Trager, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Under Pan-Unicode fonts, he lists in 2005:

  • Bitstream Cyberbit: "a must-have professionally-designed font which provides excellent coverage of many major scripts, including Latin, extended Latin, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji), Korean, and Chinese Hanzi (ideographs). Among TrueType fonts with extensive Unicode coverage, this is almost certainly the best that can be downloaded for free."
  • Code 2000: "an experimental shareware font with over 34,000 glyphs designed by James Kass to cover all of the non-Han sections of the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Kass also has designed a beta test font called Code 2001 which covers some sections of Unicode Plane 1, including Old Persian Cuneiform, Deseret, Tengwar, Cirth, Old Italic, Gothic, Aegean Numbers, Cypriot Syllabary, Pollard Script, and Ugaritic."
  • Everson Mono Unicode by Michael Everson: "covers many of the non-Han script blocks in Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646-1, including Latin, extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and even Cherokee and the Unified Canadian Syllabics."
[Google] [More]  ⦿

Vasil Gligorov
[Paleofonts V. 2]

[More]  ⦿