Maidenhead
Named after a small English town on the River Thames, Maidenhead is dynamic, tactile, and downright striking. Square capitals contrast with almost painterly lowercase forms, creating a classic, warm typographic message. According to its designer, Richard Yeend, “I started creating fonts to save time on lettering comic strips. Now my designs reflect more classical shapes and forms.”
A three-weight family with traditional italic counterparts (that is, with upright capitals), Maidenhead is an obvious choice when a touch of history or sense of tradition is called for.
Cruz Handy
“I can remember the hand-lettered signs in the windows of grocery stores from when I was a kid,” recalls Ray Cruz, designer of Cruz Handy. “Even when I was young, I appreciated those big, friendly letters.” His digital interpretation of this lettering style was created by using the brushes palette in Adobe Illustrator. “I made up a custom brush to resemble a thick, smooth brush stroke. I thought that would be an easy way to go, but I ended up spending many hours hand-tooling the design,” he says.
The result is a two-weight family of scripts, full of zings and spins that capture the flavor of quickly drawn broad-brush lettering. At large sizes, the ends of the brush strokes are apparent. As point sizes drop, however, these disappear; what’s left is a fanciful, almost monoline script.
Not satisfied with the basic character set, Cruz created a series of swash letters and logotypes to provide added versatility – and even more charm.