Expanding IngrianEuroikaH

IngrianEuroikaH is one of several typefaces in the IngrimayneType collection that was created by blending two different typefaces. In this case it was Ingriana, an informal serifed typeface, and Euroika, a decorative serifed typeface with high contrast. The bold is very bold compared to the regular so an obvious way to expand the family was to create a new semi-bold style between the two existing styles. In the picture below, the new weight is shown in yellow.

IngrianEuroika is a very legible text font despite some peculiarities due to the way it was constructed.

The revised family is available at myfonts and fontspring.

Revising CemeteryWalk

In 2018 I designed CemeteryWalk for a local cemetery-walk event. In September I thought it might be useful to add a few more images of tombstone art to the fonts, and once I started, I kept thinking of other improvements I could make. I ended up adding an alternative set of letters, reachable with the OpenType stylistic alternatives feature, as well as a set of accented characters used in various European languages. The set of alternatives takes letters from the typeface RoundWhy, which like Roundup used in the original set of letters, has reverse contrast. 

As for the added images, they became a separate font, CemeteryWalk-Art. The font began with images that I had previously designed, was supplemented from ideas I found on the Internet, and was completed by designs based on tombstone art in a local cemetery. Below are some of the images that were based on images from the local cemetery. Some but not all of the pictures in the typeface have both a silhouette and an outlined form that can be used together in layers, as in the picture below.

Until the early 20th century many of the images on gravestones had symbolic meaning. For example, there are two flower buds with a broken stems in the picture above. They were a symbol used on the grave of a child, a person who died before blooming. Flowers remain common on markers but now they seem to be more decorative than symbolic.

The revised and expanded CemeteryWalk family is available at myfonts and fontspring.

Updating AndrewAndreas

In 1994 I designed AndrewAndreas, an all-purpose sans-serif face useful for both text and display. It was a low-contrast family with three weights, a regular, a bold, and an extra-bold. At the time a three-weight family was not unusually sparse, but today it is for a legible sans. Hence, it was time for an update, adding more weights and also oblique styles, because sometimes text calls for italics and modern word processors do not fake italics in the way that some ancient programs did. The new AndrewAndreas family has twelve members in six weights, each with an oblique style. In the picture below the original members are show in white.

The oblique styles simply slant the upright styles and do not change the letter forms. However, these style (except for the black-oblique style) contain three sets open-type stylistic alternatives that can make the oblique styles look more like true italics by altering letters a, f, i j, and l, as illustrated below.

In 2019 I created a 30-font family of sans-serif faces called Yassitf that was also intended to be a versatile family useful for both text and display. Below is a comparison of it and AndrewAndreas, with AndrewAndreas first and Yassitf below it. Two weights are used for the comparison. There are many small differences.

The revised AndrewAndreas family is available on myfonts and fontspring.

TessieSomeMore

TessieSomeMore is a new typeface of tessellations in the Tessie series. Like the previous 18 members, it consists of two styles, a solid style that must be properly colored to be useful and an outlined style that can be used alone or in a layer over the solid style.

Most of the tessellations are Escher-like, that is, they resemble real-world objects such as insects (16), birds (11), animals (6), other objects or symbols (4). Another ten are not Escher-like but are geometric or abstract shapes that are visually appealing.

Most were designed with the aid of Tesselmaniac!. A few resemble shapes in previous Tessie fonts but were different enough that I included them. The tessellations include 27 different items from the Grünbaum and Shepard classification and eleven from the Heesch classification.

TessieSomeMore is available at myfonts.

(See also this post at mazepuzzles.blogpspot.com.)

Kwalett

After expanding the Qualettee family, I wondered if the thinnest member could be used to build a sans-serif family with low contrast that would work better than Qualettee for blocks of text. The result is a ten font family that I named Kwalett. It inherits the large x-height from Qualettee.

The picture below shows Kwalett at the top and Yassitf, another sans-serif face that works well for text, below. Kwalett was printed at 35 points and Yassitf at 33 and then both enlarged.

Below shows the difference between Kwalett and Qualettee. Most letters have a similar shape, but the differences in contrast make them easy to differentiate.

Kwalett is available from myfonts.

Expanding Qualettee

Qualettee is a stressed sans-serif family that was originally constructed in 1994 with three family members. In July of 2020 I expended it to ten members, adding semibold and extrabold weights and italics to all five weights. I also made minor changes and additions to the original three members. In the picture below, the original members are shown in white and the new members in yellow.

Qualettee is available at myfonts and fontspring.

Revising Quatsity

Many years ago, in 1995, I blended together two fonts, a typeface very similar to Kwersity (with low contrast) and one similar to Qwatick (with high contrast). The result I called Quatsity. Below Quatsity is in the middle, Kwersity on top, and Qwatick on the bottom.

The results were interesting but I did not feel like doing the significant work needed to get bold or italics versions. When I put my font library on myfonts.com, I did not include Quatsity, but when Fontspring.com came calling, I added its one face to their offerings.

This year I have been expanding families and I decided to see what I could do with Quatsity. I ended up expanding it to a family of eight. Below the original, now the light style, is in white and the new regular, semibold, and bold styles as well as the four new italic styles are shown in yellow. The larger family should make this design much more useable.

Quatsity is a squarish or boxy serifed font with rounded corners. Is is suitable for titles or signage and legible enough for small blocks of text. It is available on myfonts and fontspring.