The biggest yet

 Introducing JetJane, a family of 36 faces, the biggest family currently in the IngrimayneType collections.

JetJane is a geometric sans-serif family. The family has two widths and each width has nine weights. Each of these 18 fonts comes with an accompanying italics version, giving the family a total of 36 members.

JetJane, like other geometric sans faces, is plain, unadorned, and highly legible. It is derived from JetJaneMono, a monospaced sans-serif face. This development is unusual because one expects the monospaced variants to be  created after the proportional variant, if a monospaced variant is even produced. This development history results in some distinctive differences between JetJane and two other geometric sans faces from IngrimayneType, AndrewAndreas and Yassitf. Below AndewAndreas is on top, JetJane in the middle, and Yassitf on the bottom. All are printed at the same point size.

JetJane is available from myfonts.com and fontspring.com.

An expanded Dinner menu

One of the first novelty fonts I created was a font made of knives, spoons, and forks that I named Dinner. In the past few weeks I added three variants to make a family of four. One variant was composed only of forks, another only of spoons, and the third only of knives. Below the three new variants are illustrated above the orginal typeface.

The orginal Dinner had small caps in the lower-case slots. The three new family members have alternative forms of the letters in those slots and that can be seen in the "N"s in the picture.

The revised Dinner family is available from Fontspring and MyFonts.

JetJaneMono expands by condensing

 JetJaneMono is a family of sans-serif faces that are monospaced. In May the family underwent a large expansion with the addition of condensed-width styles, Below the original width is show in the first line and the condensed width in the second.

Twelve new condensed styles were added to the family. The new fonts had three weights: thin, regular, and bold. Each upright style had a corresponding italics style. Each of those six new fonts had a similar new font with the lower-case letters replaced with small caps. The text below shows all twelve of the new styles, with a different style in each line.

The revised and expanded JetJaneMono family is available at myfonts.com and fonstpring.com.

DinoTracks

 Over the years I have designed a number of letterbat fonts, fonts in which the letters are made up of objects such as feet, hands, safety pins, pipes, and bugs. In 2012 I tried to make one from dinosaur tracks but abandoned it because it just did not work.

Recently I published a maze book with a maze that had walls made of dinosaur footprints. To make this maze, I elongated the footprints from the unsuccessful font. I then realized that the narrower footprints would make much better letters than my attempt in 2012. The end result was DinoTracks.

DinoTracks is readable at small point sizes, though at small sizes seeing that the letters are made of footprints is difficult. It is available on FontSpring.

Existing font families that have been expanded in the past month or two include Rundigsburg (5), FiveOh (2), Porker (1), and Sergury (3).

Increasing color options in OakPark

I originally constructed the OakPark family in 1994 with seven family members. The fat stems invited decoration and four of the members had decorations on the stems, with one set on the upper-case keys and another on the lower-case keys. Only one member of the seven had true lower-case characters and two, one a shadowed style, had small caps on the lower-case keys. In 2018 I added an eighth style by separating out the inside of the shadowed style so it could be used in layers to provide color.

In March this year I revisited the family and did a major overhaul. I added an italics to the to go with the style that had true lower-case keys, and I added a plain or solid style to use in layers with the four decorated styles. However, the family had alternative shapes for over half of the letter forms, and the easiest way to make it all work was to take the four decorated styles and split them so each font had only one style of decoration in it. In the second row the first "A" shows the solid style, and the next eight show the decorated styles. I also added a hollow style because it could also be used in layers.

The picture below illustrates what can be done by using these fonts in layers. In the top line the solid style is red and forms the bottom layer. Above it in black is the decorated style. In the work "FUN" the hollow style is a top layer, also in red.

The word "WITH" has three layers, with the black solid font on the bottom, two decorated styles in the middle, and the hollow style on top. In the word "LAYERS" the last two letters have the solid style in red on the bottom and the hollow style in blue above it. 

Something new for 2021

 IngrimayneType's first new font for 2021 is now available on myfonts.com and fontspring.com. It is called BearAnark because it began with a blending of two old fonts, BearButteT and Anarckhie. It has five weights, each with an italic style. Like the two fonts that gave birth to it, it is slab serif and is best characterized as a display font, though it can be used for some text purposes. However, it has a lower x-height and is less compact than fonts commonly used as book or text fonts.

Below is a comparison of a few letters of BearButteT, Anarckhie, and BearAnark. You should be able to see influences of the first two on the third. The first two are considerably different and I was curious to see what a blending of the two would yield.

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Recent font families expanded by adding italic or oblique styles are PeterPierre (5) and Xaltid (2). Those expanded by adding new weights are KnewFont (3) and Handana (2). Families expanded by adding both new weights and italic/oblique styles are Quidic (3), Xahosch (4) LeakerorLeach (4), GrechenHello (4), Asterx (3), BetterEuroika (2), WalcomeOne (6), Argenta, (4), and RosarGrad (2). 

Thirteen more

I spent much of January on the computer improving typeface families that I created twenty to thirty years ago. Some of what I am doing is partially inspired by America's most prolific type designer, who recently reached 1700 typeface families. Most of his families have two styles, one an oblique. The oblique style makes the family more attractive and is very easy to add.

Getting oblique or italic styles in late January were the DavidFarewell, RundigPencil, and ArgentaBobbed families. 

Early in January SusiScript got oblique styles, but as I was working on posters for the family, I noticed that a bolder style, an extrabold, would be useful. 

Qwatick, a decorative serifed family, had two weights with a large gap between them. An intermediate weight seemed in order. With the addition of an italics for each weight, the family now has six members.