A schoolbook version of the Work Sans font.

NotCourierSans is a re-interpretation of Nimbus Mono whose design began in Wroclaw at the occasion of the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008.

For more detailed information explore the files included in the font package (FONTLOG.txt) or go through the Font Info section (FONTLOG and Comment) in the font (open the font file in FontForge and go to Font Info in the Element menu).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Font is something like a corporation. From outside, it is hard for us to see how it works and who is working in it. In metal type era, we were close to glyphs but today we never know how they feels about their treatment. Possibly, glyphs are holding a clandestine meeting at the deep inside of font file and plan a sabotage against users and type engineers. We don't know, but…

Mess by Tezzo Suzuki. 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

BianZhiDai is a font inspired by shading characters in ASCII art and 编织袋 (woven plastic bag in Simple Chinese). BianZhiDai is good with colors, especially in combination with different fill/stroke colors. Try it, and play it. Besides, the whole font is modular based, so you can customize it in Glyphs any way you like.

The VG5000 takes its name from the homonymous computer manufactured by Phillips, released in 1984. Its video processor displays bitmap characters built in a common matrix of 8x10 dots. The modern VG5000 is built on a grid 4 times more detailed, allowing more freedom and imagination of curves, where there were only right angles. The superposition of the new drawing onto the starting matrix sometimes reveals unexpected mixtures. Some right angles have been deliberately preserved as vestiges of the first digital fonts, offering a hybrid final shape. One of the inherited features is the accents that are always placed at the same height, forcing some letters to crash. Many glyphs and pictograms complete the VG5000's original set, including references to VG5000 games and the history of emoji.

VG5000 by Justin Bihan. 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.

Outward is a display font family coming in three cuts: Block (regular), Round (italic) and Borders (bold). Outward Block was initially designed in capitals only with the intent of getting rid of white spaces to reach a black type color, as opposed to the ideal grey sought after by typographers. The extended set of characters and families was developed following this root.

Outward by Raoul Audouin. 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

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.

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.

Font created using Glyphr Studio by the students of ENSAD Paris at La Générale, with the help of the F/LOS foundry Velvetyne.

Creators: Pauline Cormault, Esther Michaud, Claire Mucchieli, Merlin Andreae, Raphaël Maman, Pedro Gomes-Cardoso, Juliette Nier, Gabrielle Meistretty, Damien Bauza.

Résistance by A collective. 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.

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

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

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.