P22 Type Foundry Highlights.

Calligrapher Edward Johnston was commissioned to design a typeface for the London Underground system in 1916. He drew a sans serif with classical proportions – a unique concept at the time that became an icon in British graphic design. After securing an exclusive license from the London Transport Museum in 1997, P22 revived the original design, staying close to the original design intent and maintaining his system of proportions. In 2007, P22 revised and expanded the collection into a massive character set with several additional weights, expansive language support, and slight stylistic revisions. P22 also added a Pro version that provides an italic interpretation of the typeface, alternate caps, and “humanistic” and “geometric” alternates.

The great Italian artist, inventor, and visionary Leonardo da Vinci created an extraordinary variety of work which continues to amaze those who study it. This font family faithfully captures Leonardo’s remarkable imagination and includes an exclusive Da Vinci Backwards font (reflecting the artist’s own unique style of handwriting). The 72 extras included are drawn from Leonardo’s sketchbooks and journals.

Mexican printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913) created a massive variety of material such as broadsheets, cards, advertisements, and posters, which represented a defense of the common man and a manifestation of the horrible and gruesome events of that time. The artist often cut his own lettering to look like more decorative versions of Gothic wood types. The P22 Posada typeface was created to emulate his most notable imagery: calaveras (skulls), that celebrate the Day of the Dead. Calaveras represent effigies of living people depicted as skeletons going about daily activities, and are humorous and playful in a way that helps bridge this world with the beyond. P22 Posada offers two small caps style fonts and one Extras font containing 60 fun and spooky images.

On the 4th of July 1776, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America was adopted by Congress, and the handwritten draft was sent to a printer, who made 150 to 200 copies. A few weeks later, a fair copy was calligraphed on parchment for the delegates to sign. The P22 Declaration font set is based on this calligraphic copy. The family has 6 styles, including a script with the look of 18th-century penmanship, with a slightly irregular edge, as found on documents made with ink quill pens on vellum or parchment, and an accompanying Blackletter font that was used for emphasis in the original document and for the document’s title. A third font, featuring the signatures of the signers of the document, is also included.

Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) is a system for defining and communicating engineering tolerances. It uses a symbolic language on engineering drawings and computer-generated three-dimensional solid models that explicitly describe nominal geometry and its allowable variation. P22’s symbol font is designed specifically to be used by engineers to describe CAD produced outside the CAD environment. The typeface includes a chart featuring character names and keyboard placement, includes the ‘unilateral’ symbol added to the system in 2009, and complies with ASME Y14.5M-1994.

The Art Nouveau styles of the late 19th century exhibited a bold approach to organic lines and lavish decoration. This new style was spread throughout the world and helped usher in a new era that led to modern art and design. The P22 Art Nouveau font family includes 3 distinct styles: Bistro, Cafe, and an Extras style containing 97 flowery characters.

The Book of Kells is a ninth century gospel created in the British Isles and is considered to be the finest existing example of early Celtic art. The book itself is now housed in the Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland. P22 Kells is a computer font set that combines historical accuracy with functional readability in two different styles (Round and Square), and features 72 elements and linking borders.

This font set is based on famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s hand-lettering found on the Chicago Midway Gardens working drawings from 1913. This type of architectural lettering is a bit more casual than the standard lettering found on most blueprints. It evokes the personality of Frank Lloyd Wright and complements the other fonts in the P22 FLW font series. Midway One and Midway Two, which have both been remastered and contain over 400 characters, can be used interchangeably to provide a more natural hand lettering feel, while Midway Ornaments features over 100 decorative border elements that can be combined in many ways for surprising and effective decorative motifs

P22 Victorian Gothic is a font family that was created in conjunction with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s exhibition of Victorian-era French artist James Tissot. The fonts developed for this set are based on historic typefaces dating from the late 19th century. Victorian Gothic was based on a type style called ‘Atlanta’: a simple, expanded width, quirky, yet elegant face similar to ‘Copperplate’. Victorian Swash was inspired by the willowy, delicate face ‘Columbian’, which has also been known in recent years as ‘Glorietta’, but adds ’snap-on’ flourishes based on the original Columbian ornamental embellishment designs. Victorian Ornaments features over 150 decorative embellishments.

This font is named for Marcel Heuzé, a Frenchman who was forced into labor in Germany during World War II. During this time, he wrote letters to his wife and daughters that contained rare first-person testimony of day-to-day survival within a labor camp and the most beautiful expressions of love imaginable. They were the original source documents used to create a script font that retains the expressive character of his original handwriting. It is a highly readable running script that includes textural details which capture the look of ink on paper. Marcel Caps is a hand-lettered titling face intended as a companion to the Script, while Marcel EuroPost One and Two each feature more than 200 historical postmarks, cancellation and censor marks.