One Tues­day every month, I’m going to round up a cou­ple (maybe a few) awe­some dis­play type­faces to show­case and give a lit­tle break­down on each one. If you have a sug­ges­tion you want me to take a look at, drop me a line. Let’s jump straight into some head­line goodness.

Stringfellows

Foundry : Nicky Laatz

Designer(s) : Nicky Laatz

Cost: $20

First up this month is a pen and ink script with plen­ty of hand-lettered quirk­i­ness. Rough edges and an uneven base­line rein­force the let­ter­ing aspect of the font. The uneven­ness also gives it a good bounce so it flows nice­ly. It could use some more alter­nate glyphs to help the hand-lettered idea, but Stringfellows does come with an orna­ment com­pan­ion font that has a few catch­words to use. Its look makes it pre­fect for wed­ding invi­ta­tions, thank-you cards, and other per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence need­ing a lettering-esque touch.

Voltage

Foundry : Laura Worthington

Designer(s) : Laura Worthington

Cost: $19 per style

Now for a slight­ly dif­fer­ent script. Voltage by Laura Worthington is a struc­tured, util­i­tar­i­an, and angu­lar entry in the script genre. Given its solid con­struc­tion and rhythm, the type has great bal­ance and good read­abil­i­ty for dis­play uses. It does have a slight indus­tri­al feel but with some of its more fun alter­nates and swash­es can break free of feel­ing machined. Voltage then becomes even more ener­getic and sign-painterly.

Ridewell

Foundry : Intelligent Design

Designer(s) : Kostas Bartsokas

Cost: $25 per style

In the mid­dle of the pack this month is a vin­tage, wood type inspired type­face by Kostas Bartsokas called Ridewell. Besides the clean ver­sion shown above, there is also a dis­tressed print­ed ver­sion. In the spir­it of old block posters, the fonts come packed with lig­a­tures and alter­nates to cre­ate stacked let­ter effects. It’s com­pressed size gives it char­ac­ter and will help fit­ting it in small head­line spaces. You don’t need much. Ridewell is def­i­nite­ly a dis­play face where a lit­tle goes a long way.

Marker Aid

Foundry : Pintassilgo Prints

Designer(s) : Ricardo Marcin and Erica Jung

Cost: $24 per style

There’s plen­ty of sketchy, mark­er fonts float­ing around the Internet so why pick this one? Because it’s like four fonts in one. There are four vari­a­tions for each let­ter and two vari­a­tions for each num­ber built in through OpenType alter­nates. Marker Aid is bold and expres­sive. That makes it per­fect for music posters, organ­ic pack­ag­ing, and any­thing need­ing a live­ly atmosphere.

Elise

Foundry : Context

Designer(s) : Alex Liebold

Cost: $42 for all six styles

Oh, I’m a suck­er for lay­ered type. I only did a hand­ful of let­ters above because you need to see Elise in action to real­ly under­stand how awe­some it can be. In the image below you can see the let­ter ‘A’ being built sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways given the four parts Elise has — 3D, fill, ribbed, and flour­ish. All put togeth­er it is cute and charm­ing typog­ra­phy per­fect for invi­ta­tions and announce­ments. Dialed back a bit with only the 3D or ribbed styles, you have a great retro poster face. That ver­sa­til­i­ty makes Elise an excel­lent tool to have. (Also, if you just want the orna­ments, they’re avail­able for free.)