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.

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 Publi Fluor shop was situated in the northern part of Brussels, Schaerbeek, and founded by the father of Madame Christelle Crickx who was a trained letter painter. Starting to cut letters with the rounded and skilled cardboard templates drawn by her father, Madame Crickx slowly morphs the shapes by analysing how typographic niceties confuse her non-trained clients and leads to bad letters placement. She progressively removes the optical compensation of rounded tops and bottoms, straightens sides, and attaches accents for less floating parts. Those moves add a very specific orientation to this otherwise quite common bold italic sans serif display typeface.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Façade is a typeface created from the architectural grid of the ÉSAD Orléans facade. This grid is used as a basis for the first sketches, then as a spirit for all the typefaces. The 'sud' (south) version is faithful to the architecture while the other weights are emancipated from it.

Façade by Éléonore Fines. 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.

After discovering Ange Degheest’s archives at the Rennes School of Fine Arts, we decided to put together an exhibition that attempted to finally give the designer the full recognition she deserves. In this exhibition, visitors learnt about Degheest’s life story and professional achievements, and discovered many original archival documents that had never previously been presented to the public. In addition to this historical research, we revived some of Ange Degheest’s most remarkable typefaces and lettering work, which are now available in digital format.

To revive means: to resurrect, to reactivate, to renew; and in many ways our work consisted in a kind of resurrection. We had indeed to reactivate the memory of Ange Degheest by diving in her archives, by exhuming the story of a woman who lived through many ages and locations. Only once we had acquired a good grasp of her life story, were we able to revive her typefaces. Reviving her designs and distributing them widely, free of charge, is our way to honour Ange Degheest’s memory and to give them a new life in the 21st century.

Deheest is a project by Ange Degheest, Eugénie Bidaut, Oriane Charvieux, Mandy Elbé, Luna Delabre, Camille Depalle, Justine Herbel, May Jolivet and Benjamin Gomez, created in Atelier de création typographique from EESAB Rennes.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Amdal is a Tifinagh typeface designed by Walid Bouchouchi - Akakir Studio. Tifinagh is the alphabet used to write Tamazight, a language common to several North African countries and an official language in Algeria and Morocco. This alphabet finds its origin in antiquity, it has long fallen into disrepair, and reintroduced thanks to the committed work of linguists and historians of the region.

Amdal is a titling font, born out of a lettering project for Korean fashion brand Merely Made, which was developing a collection inspired by the Sahara (North African desert) with the keyphrase “a better world”. From there began the development of a font with a limited glyphset intended to write a particular sentence. Then the rest of the glyphs followed until the glyphsets for Basic-IRCAM, Extended, Neo-Tifinagh and Touareg were completed.

“Amdal” means “World” in Tamazight (Berber language).

Amdal by Walid Bouchouchi. Distributed by velvetyne.fr