Ability™ is another in a range of typefaces by Scholtz Fonts of Durban, South Africa. The designer, Anton Sholtz, has been producing handwriting and ethnic fonts for over a decade. Ability extends his large portfolio to include a diversion from his usual design goals and produced a very stylish handwriting font. Due to his geographic location, the graphic design work of Sholtz has typically been influenced by African styles and they tend to bear an “ethnic” appearance. He found that there was little available commercially in the way of typefaces to represent his local African population which is advancing rapidly technologically, and was creating a strong demand for locally-influenced design. Ethnic typography was needed especially for advertising and uses where a more localized representation of text is preferred to the Western European styled fonts, stock to the Western advertising trade. This realization that there was a growing strong market for ethnic styles led to a continuous development process by Sholtz and his foundry has released over 126 fonts to date.

The creation of Ability came with some painstaking work to ensure that swooshes and extending strokes overlapped in an aesthetically pleasing way. This comprised checking every letter-pair to ensure legibility. Swooshes and extending strokes are individual to each glyph to ensure the typeface remains less rigid and more like a real handwritten effort. This means there is no discernible repetition of shape so text tends to have a more genuine feel to the handwriting. With over 235 characters, Ability contains enough glyphs to be used in any European language including punctuation and symbols.

Ability is suitable for use in informal communications such as greetings cards or wedding stationery.