Fluxisch Else is an experiment, a first attempt to escape the post ’80 era of geometrical purity that is so typical of Postscript vector based font drawing. The shapes of Fluxisch Else were obtained from scanning printed textpages that were optically composed by cheap phototypesetting machines in the sixties and seventies. Some of Fluxisch Else beautiful features are: round angles, floating baselines, erratic kerning.

More precisely in this case, George Maciunas of the Fluxus group used an IBM composer (probably a Selectric typewriter) for most of his own work, and as a former designer, for all Fluxus work. In the 1988 book ‘Fluxus Codex’, kindly given to Pierre Huyghebaert by Sylvie Eyberg, the body text is typeset in a charmingly rounded and dancing Fluxisch that seems to smile playfully at its dry swiss creator. As if it was really tempted, trying to provide a beautiful warm up to this old modernist classical.

The Alfphabet family is based on the Belgian road signage lettering called ‘Alphabet’ in French and ‘Alfabet’ in Dutch.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mourier is a geometric alphabet designed by Eric Mourier in 1971 following a strict set of rules. The font is based on a square of 7 x 7 units and made of unclosed lines. The first and only use of the lead-cast font was on the booklet 'The Myth about Bird B', a leporello design by Mourier and written by Knud Holten (a poet).

In 2002, Sébastien Hayez adapted the typeface as a digital font, with the approval of its original designer (thanks to him), which was afterwards published as part of the Velvetyne Type Foundry collection in 2011. Then, in 2020, Ukraininan designer Alex Ash (Alexander Kondratenko) proposed a Cyrillic alphabet expansion of the font, of which he had imagined the capitals. Ariel Martín Perez took this opportunity and developped lowercase letters for Latin and Cyrillic scripts (with feedback from Alex Ash for the Cyrillic), added diacritics and symbols, mastered the font and also created several sets of alternates.

Mourier by Eric Mourier, with the contribution of Sébastien Hayez, Ariel Martín Pérez, Alexander Kondratenko. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

PicNic is an organic typeface inhabiting a cloud of contextual ligatures and inclusive ligatures, substituting for the midpoint automatically. They are designed mainly for French.

The shapes are inspired by the trajectory of a drop of water on an oilcloth, the shadows of the tree leaves on the fabric lying in the grass, the precise path that the ant takes to the watermelon. They attempt to translate the sensory experience of a picnic among friends.

This typeface will suit for all wild, poetic and bucolic explorers for their most adventurous excursions.

PicNic by Mariel Nils. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Anthony is a typeface designed by Sun Young Oh and inspired by the artworks of British sculptor Anthony Caro. The form of this typeface comes from his sculptures that are leaning against each other.

The typeface is packed with alternates for most letters that are pseudo-randomly picked when you write some text.

Anthony by Sun Young Oh. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Avara is a libre transitional serif curveless type family. The placement of its nodes is exclusively based on a rough square grid. The original reason of this design choice was to facilitate collaboration on the font, and it now results in the radical and highly constrained shapes of this type family. It was started and first released in November 2011 by Raphaël Bastide; it has been updated since then and finally published here. It might be updated again in the future, tho. Maybe by you.

The Bold style was initiated by Raphaël Bastide and continued by Wei Huang and Lucas Le Bihan; the Bold Italic by Lucas Le Bihan; the Black was started by Walid Bouchouchi and Jérémy Landes, then it was boldened again and finished by Lucas Le Bihan.

Avara by Raphaël Bastide, with the contribution of Wei Huang, Lucas Le Bihan, Walid Bouchouchi, Jérémy Landes. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

CirrusCumulus was designed without using curves. it's made-up of different modules inspired by scientific diagrams. CirrusCumulus is also a hybridization of two styles: it has a lineal-style lowercase set, as well as a script-like uppercase set, while some glyphs adopt italic forms which produce unusual combinations, arabesques and ligatures. CirrusCumulus includes a large panel of characters that can be used to draw figures, shapes or patterns, a variable ligature system, and many non-binary and inclusive glyphs.

CirrusCumulus by Clara Sambot. 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.

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.

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

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

Used as a titling font, its height and the stability of its shapes lend it elegance, whilst details inspired by calligraphy and technique reveal all of Murmure’s notions of experimentation, research and creativity. Le Murmure is a typeface devoid of serifs which combines effectiveness, legibility and singularity. Its highly condensed proportions draw their inspiration from magazine titling fonts and add the editorial dimension the agency wished to endow their new identity with.

This typeface comes with many glyph variations, meaning alternate letters drawn in an even more original way. Here lies infinite potential which the users will take great delight in exploiting through a random opentype function.

Inga Plönnig's Magnet was a great influence on Le Murmure. If you like Le Murmure, you should defintely have a look at the broader family that Magnet has to offer.

Le Murmure by Jérémy Landes. 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.

Compagnon is a typeface family composed of five distinctive styles. It finds its inspiration in the online archives of Typewriter Database specimens and combines different periods of the history of typewriter typefaces. Each weight is based on singular references relating to significant periods aiming to underline the evolution of typewriter characters as they are called.

Compagnon by Juliette Duhé, Léa Pradine, Valentin Papon, Chloé Lozano, Sébastien Riollier. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

This typeface was designed with the Tarot de Marseille in mind. This led to a funny blend of medieval-ish and cooperblack-ish typeface. An anniversary update of June 2022 adds a lighter and sharper weight to the original bold and soft one.

The Basteleur Arcana represents a lot of things a designer can experience: new beginnings, having fun, crafting, but also a lack of confidence and having hard time to finish projects

Basteleur by Keussel. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Bright colored and blobby shaped patterns of the poison dart frog mixed together with the strangely formed muscles in Japanese woodcuts. Kaeru kaeru combines both inspirations in one typeface.

It was created in a seminar called 'Type – Inspiration elsewhere' led by Jérémy Landes at the HfG Karlsruhe. The idea of the seminar was, to take different inspirations out of nature and illustrations and try to combine them to one typeface.

Kaeru Kaeru by Isabel Motz. 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.

The Ouroboros or uroborus is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. Ouroboros is also a font for alchemists, witches, heretics, outsiders and curious people in general. It's inspired by early art-nouveau styles, which were sometimes used in relation with magical themes and symbolism, so it comes together with a set of alchemical and astronomical symbols.

Ouroboros by Ariel Martín Pérez, with the contribution of H·Alix Sanyas. Distributed by velvetyne.fr.

Lithops is a very display, very unique, very complex semi modular font. Uppercase only, it was originally hand drawn in Procreate, and then processed in Glyphs 3. Its name stems from succulent plants to which it bears a resemblance, and was (loosely) inspired by Art Nouveau, Alzheimer brains and Matisse cutouts. Lithops started in February 2021 as a spontaneous creative outlet and glyph drawing exercise. Though it may not be easy to use and is difficult to categorise, Lithops serves as an exploration of the future of type design, begging the question: how complex can a font be, all while staying cohesive, legible and aesthetically pleasing, and most importantly, fun?

Lithops by Anne-Dauphine Borione. Distributed by velvetyne.fr