The Libertinage font-set we developed for the FLOSS+Art book. It was built by copying and pasting parts of Linux Libertine glyphs or simply by all-turning glyphs. There are 27 variations, one for each letter of the Latin alphabet and the ‘Full’ version, containing all modifications.

A schoolbook version of the Work Sans font.

Stroke fonts with no contrast and capital letters only based on diverse pseudo-generic elements for multi-usages.

Reglo is a font so tough that you can seriously mistreat it. The font was designed by Sebastien Sanfilippo in autumn 2009 and is used for Radio Panik identity.

Based of the lettering of old road signs in France for hamlets and localities. This lettering is also in use as clean vectors on some motorway signs in Luxembourg.

The first cut of OSP-DIN was drawn for the festival Cinema du réel 2009, when we were invited to work on a cartographic version of the programme. We drew the first cut of the open source DIN from grid based drawings similar to the original 1932 drawings of the DIN we saw during our investigative trip to Berlin in February 2008.

A collection of fonts from OSP including; work-avec, sans-guilt, reglo, libertinage, fluxisch-else, din, crickx, belgica-belgika, alfphabet

Sans Guilt MB: Based on a rasterized pdf made with the Monotype Gill Sans delivered with Mac OSX.

Sans Guilt DB: Based on early sketches by Eric Gill

Sans Guilt LB: Based on lead type from Royal College of Arts letterpress workshop.

Use & Modify is a personal selection of beautiful, classy, punk, professional, incomplete, weird typefaces. Open source licences make them free to use and modify. This selection is the result of deep search and crushes. This selection is yours.

Violet Sans finds harmony in disparate forms, at once sharp and aggressive it can retreat to being gentle and smooth, allowing for different expressions within a single weight and style. Initially designed as an all caps display face with generous counterforms and extended crossbars, this same personality has been extrapolated into the wider character set. As a nod to the long tradition of geometric sans serif typefaces, in particular Eurostile, Violet Sans has been developed for modern applications with a bit of experimentation and haphazard gestures built right in. For daily use, enjoy.

A soft monospace (or proportional!) variable font by Tyler Finck.

Sono was initially only monospace. Sono was released in 2020 and was named for its most obvious characterstics: soft, monospaced. It has a low cap height which I enjoy when typing with THE CAPS LOCK KEY TURNED ON. Sono has been constantly updated and in 2022 received an additional axis called mono which has corresponding proportional styles. Those styles are prefixed with the name “Sans” for the sake of brevity. The name Sono doesn’t make as much sense now, but changing it would upset a precarious balance in the universe. Ok maybe not that severe. But it’d be weird. This is also the final free font I intend to make in the foreseeable future.

Sono comes in static styles for desktop and web as well as a single variable font and has received several updates since its release in August of 2018. It is available on Github and on Google Fonts.

Grotesk is one of Velvetyne's first published typefaces. Designed by Frank Adebiaye in 2010 and released on Velvetyne in 2012, Grotesk is a heavily geometric sans serif typeface with an unusually large spacing. The original version of Grotesk is known because it was used on the official website of the city of Paris for many years. Even if the city's visual identity has changed since then, the broken 'S' of Grotesk can still be seen in some of the technical vehicles of the city.

In 2023, a new version of Grotesk developed by Ariel Martín Pérez was released. This new version introduces new weights that are multiplexed, which means that you can change the weight of the font without changing the width of the paragraphs. This new version also presents some subtle optical corrections. Last but not least, it considerably expands the glyphset of the font with a brand new lowercase set as well as language support for Russian, Ukrainian, Tifinagh and many Latin-based languages.

You can use Grotesk to give a relaxed and elegant touch to your texts, its subtle art-déco flavour will enlighten any composition.

Grotesk by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

In 2022, Hato press invited Raphaël Bastide to do a publication part of the zine series. In a wish to revive the “fan” part of fanzine, Raphaël Bastide decided to pay tribute to Wikipedia, a surviving, precious, unequaled place on the open WWW. The 16 pages riso print zine shows the encyclopedia’s interface as a post-human vestige, an artifact invaded by biomorphic figures and spreading typography. Through the pages of the zine, the reader discovers how the graphic elements are spreading like mycelium, creating an ornamental graphic network.

The Fungal font is a close collaboration between Jérémy Landes and Raphaël Bastide, so the characters of the zine can grow and spread thanks to their variable design. Fungal is a fork of DejaVu Sans, a libre font, popular on Linux systems.

The hypæ of the mycelium growing from each glyphs can be controlled in their length (the Grow axis) and in their thickness (the Thickness axis) allowing to fine tune the density of the rhizome growing on the page and the legibility of the text in the same move.

Fungal by Raphaël Bastide, Jérémy Landes. Distributed by velvetyne.fr

The TINY font family was originally created over the summer of 2018 as the visual identity for an experimental retail pop-up shop in Chinatown, New York City called “Today in New York”, or TINY for short. The shop was the result of an intern project at Verdes, a creative agency, between Jack Halten Fahnestock and Théïa Flynn, where they sold T-shirts and tote bags customized on the spot. TINY is based on the smallest type size (using only 5 of the 16 available print heads) of the HandJet EBS-250, the tool used in the shop for immediate printing on textiles. Its variable dot size comes from the HandJet’s adjustable ink output.

TINY 5x3 comes as a variable font with a size axis to modify dot size from 0—300, as well as 15 separate instances (each increasing the dot size by 20 units).

TINY by Jack Halten Fahnestock. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Sans-serif, but with calligraphic influence and strong contrast, Trickster borrows shapes from Merovingian writing, Blackletters construction and contemporean drawing. Trickster is a display typeface in one bold weight. Its unusual shapes, tight spacing and various alternates allow designers to create quickly strong headlines and beautiful titling.

According to Wikipedia, in mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic creature), which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and which uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. So that's the origin of the name of this typeface.

Trickster by Jean-Baptiste Morizot. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Sligoil is a monospace typeface. It has been designed for the interface of the Unknown Number game, published by Godolphin Games. Sligoil is also the name of an evil fictional company within the game.

The Sligoil typeface has been influenced by the culture of the British isles (the work of Matthew Carter, of course, but also signs on Irish whiskey distilleries) and also by the letters on vintage Space Cadet keyboards (produced by the MIT). It presents wide language support for Latin-based European languages and a collection of symbols and alternate forms (including upright italic letters).

Sligoil by Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr

Jgs Font is a font family made as a tribute to Joan G. Stark (a.k.a. jgs, Spunk), pioneer of ASCII art.

This font has been specifically designed to draw ASCII art. Its bitmap look and its shapes accentuate the ambiguity between text and drawing. The 'graphic' properties of the characters have been exaggerated depending on the way ASCII artists use them.

The glyphs that make up Jgs Font can be combined from one character to the next in line or from one line to another. It allows, by association of characters, to produce continuous lines, curves, frames, patterns, levels of gray.

In order to be able to change body size while maintaining these pixel-perfect continuity effects, the family is available in three fonts.

Jgs5 for body text sizes that are a multiple of 10 : 10px, 20px, 30px etc. Jgs7 for body text sizes that are a multiple of 14 : 14px, 28px, 42px etc. Jgs9 for body text sizes that are a multiple of 18 : 18px, 36px, 54px etc.

For better results, the body size and the leading need to have exactly the same value and correspond to the multiples cited above.

Jgs font by Adel Faure. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Typefesse is a playful butt-shaped typeface in which the letters are rendered in such a way that the reading is done through the folds of the body.

The design of Typefesse is motivated by the surprising combination of two vocabularies, that of the body and that of the alphabet. The drawn alphabet reveals contortionist and playful creatures that either hide inside of it or that expose themselves to it. Is it the letter that defines the bodies' shapes, or is it the other way around? These creatures play with the viewer's gaze and fight against the lettershapes by disturbing their readability with their exuberance. The alphabet is laid bare and readers become spectator-voyeurs in spite of themselves. Typefesse is a typeface that generates a confusion between reading, seeing and spying. It's a titling font, although it has a surprising readability at small body sizes. Its three styles have been named in reference to the moon and its mysteries

Typefesse by Océane Juvin. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

A collection of fonts from Velvetyne including; Anthony, Avara, BackOut, Basteleur, CirrusCumulus, Compagnon, Façade, Grotesk, Jgs font, Kaeru Kaeru, Mourier, Ouroboros, PicNic, Pilowlava, TINY, Typefesse, VG5000, Mess, Format 1452, Trickster, Lithops, Lineal, Amdal, Gulax, BianZhiDai, Degheest, Fungal, Karrik, Le Murmure, Outward, Resistance, Sligoil.

Pilowlava (sic) was born as an intuitive, fast-paced creative feedback loop in which its creators tried to surprise one another. The result is a typeface that recalls cooled lava flows drawn with a compass. Striving to please both of its parents, Pilowlava seeks a balance between viscous energy and controlled geometry. This geometric approach lies on the shoulders of researches conducted by Swiss designer Armin Hofmann in his Graphic Design Manual edited in 1965. The structures of its glyphs are mostly derived from hand-written dynamics, that feed from both calligraphic and graffiti references. All these sweet inconsistencies produce a vacillating, fluctuating typographic colour, embodied by the almost-mathematical tension of its curves. Under a hardened crust, Pilowlava awaits the smallest temperature rise to recover its viscosity. The alternate shapes of certain letters play out these thermic accidents and raise the temperature of the text.

It takes its name from lava pillows, a natural phenomenon that is produced when lava is expelled by an underwater volcano, or when the lava flows of an emerged volcano encounter a body of water. In contact with the water, the lava flow is so hot that it's coated in a glass film. As it isn't totally cooled down, it transforms into smooth pillows that continue to slowly grow. This way, lava creates tubes and viscous balls that pile up and shape one another, and then they aggregate in puffy clusters that can measure several meters.

Pilowlava by Anton Moglia, Jérémy Landes, with the contribution of Maksym Kobuzan. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Inspired by humanist typefaces such as Albertus, BackOut has a decidely African design. Its name comes from the eponymous song by Bob Marley and The Wailers.

The 2.0 version of BackOut is a faithful review of Frank's original with improved spacing and kerning, corrected contrast, new lowercase letters and extended language support and functionalities. In October 2022, the 2.1 version was released, with revised kerning and some minor modifications.

BackOut by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Again another 'experimental' monolinear sans. Enjoy or not.

Gulax by Morgan Gilbert, with the contribution of Anton Moglia. Distributed by velvetyne.fr

Lineal is a Libre Family initiated by Frank Adebiaye and updated by the Velvetyne Team.

According to Frank, Lineal was originally inspired by the song called 2870 by Gérard Manset. It ended-up looking like a sort of Futura built with modules, without any optical corrections. Its first version was drawn in 2010 with FontForge 2.0. and published on Velvetyne on February 2011.

Since 2019, Anton Moglia worked on enhancing the character set, to fit his own needs (with Glyphs App). It was largely developed by Anton Moglia, who reviewed all the capitals, added lowercase letters and other symbols and gave it a more stable structure. He extended the family by adding weights, from Thin to Heavy and cleaned up the entire character set of superfluous curve points.

During 2023, Ariel Martín Pérez helped Anton Moglia publish this substantial update of Lineal, developing the character set for other languages and helping build the repository for publication. Ariel Martín Pérez expanded language support and improved spacing and kerning.

Lineal by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Anton Moglia, Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr

Format 1452 is a Din-like typeface built with modules, without any optical corrections.

Format 1452 by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Anton Moglia. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.