Quasimoda

Quasimoda

Font Sampler

(EN) The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (NL) Op brute wijze ving de schooljuf de quasi-kalme lynx. (CS) Nechť již hříšné saxofony ďáblů rozezvučí síň úděsnými tóny waltzu, tanga a quickstepu. (HU) Jó foxim és don Quijote húszwattos lámpánál ülve egy pár bűvös cipőt készít. (RO) Înjurând pițigăiat, zoofobul comandă vexat whisky și tequila. (RU) Разъяренный чтец эгоистично бьёт пятью жердями шустрого фехтовальщика. (BG) Огньове изгаряха с блуждаещи пламъци любовта човешка на Орфей. (SR) Фијуче ветар у шибљу, леди пасаже и куће иза њих и гунђа у оџацима. (EL) Ταχίστη αλώπηξ βαφής ψημένη γη, δρασκελίζει υπέρ νωθρού κυνός. Type your own text to test the font!
Description

Quasimoda is the “almost fashionable” sans serif family with 11 weights and matching italics.

It combines fashionable geometric forms with old-fashioned classical proportions. Berlin-based Botio Nikoltchev (Lettersoup) designed Quasimoda so that the lighter weights give off a fresh, modern feel, the middle weights provide excellent readability and elegance for longer texts, while the boldest weights introduce a slightly antiquated flair. Partly geometric, partly grotesque, Quasimoda is a versatile beast. It follows the current fashions but does not completely give into them, retaining classical proportions and the slight ugliness of the 19th-century grotesques. With its long descenders and its small x-height, Quasimoda combines well with Renaissance serif fonts such as Garamond’s, or it can serve itself as a leading body font for longer texts, as well as a variety of branding, headline and display purposes. Quasimoda includes characters for more than 80 Latin-script languages, and several sets of figures available as OpenType features.

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Botio Nikoltchev

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2016 by Botio Nikoltchev. All rights reserved.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Commercial License from other shops

Buy at: Lettersoup

Buy at: Adobe Fonts

Free fonts

Quasimoda Light at: Lettersoup

Type is a cultural heritage, it is one of the ways to recreate the surrounding world

By Szandra Peev • 25 January 2021
INTERVIEW with Botio Nikoltchev | LETTERSOUP
PHOTOS: © Lettersoup, © Boryana Pandova, © Svoboda Tzekova
BG
EN
Lettersoup founder: Botio Nikoltchev, photo by Boryana Pandova | LETTERSOUP
Lettersoup founder: Botio Nikoltchev, photo by Boryana Pandova

In this exclusive interview Botio Nikoltchev speaks about his professional development. He was a student of Lucas de Groot and after graduating he had the chance to work with such famous type designers as Akira Kobayashi and Erik Spiekermann. Botio also shares his views on the diversity of Cyrillic letterform models in the different Cyrillic alphabets. He tells us about the project Sofia Sans, which is now the typeface of Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria. Botio also describes his newest release Apparat and reveals his future plans.

Let’s talk about your professional and creative journey. Where did it start – in Sofia or Berlin? Which colleagues and professors have left a mark on your work?

Botio Nikoltchev (BN): I don’t see myself as an artist but more as an addict. Type design is actually an endless way of improvement, an endless search of harmony and rhythm, an endless desire of beauty and ugliness.

It was a long way until I started designing typefaces. But yes, it was in Berlin, I started my studies as an industrial designer. My love for type came by taking typography classes with Prof. Betina Müller and type-design classes with Prof. Lucas de Groot.

Lucas de Groot and Botio Nikoltchev
Pepa Karaivanova, Lucas de Groot, Sonja Knecht, Botio Nikoltchev in Sofia on 24th May, photo Sv. Tzekova

I was lucky to have the opportunity to work with some leading type designers. There were moments I thought Akira Kobayashi doesn’t have eyes, but microscopes. His ability to see the smallest details is really incredible.

Erik Spiekermann –– what a literate and entertaining man. Оnce we talked about Bulgarian history and his knowledge truly impressed me. He is not just able to recognize problems on a daily life basis, and solve them through design, but he is also excellent in finding the right people at the right time for the job.

You are part of many font projects in which you are also responsible for the development of the Cyrillic script. What are the main challenges which a modern type designer needs to overcome when working on Cyrillic font projects?

Apparat
Font family: Apparat; Release 2020; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev

BN: The challenges are quite similar to the Latin and there are no particular ones. It always depends on the project, the client etc.

Of course there are decisions to be made e.g. how to handle characters like “K”. They could have the same grapheme but they also could look different in Latin, Cyrillic and Greek.

What is your personal and professional view on the local forms of the Cyrillic like Bulgarian, Serbian, North Macedonain, Ukrainian and the Cyrillic used by Mongolians, Bashkirs etc.?

BN: Although as a type designer I work mostly with a black and white colors, I enjoy very much the colorful aspects of life. I like the diverseness of the Cyrillic world and the character variations.

When you think in terms of evolution, it never moves in a straight direction and it never ends at one particular point. So to me these variations are the epitome of the continuously flowing and changing Cyrillic world.

A while ago, together with Vassil Kateliev we launched a research on the handwritten forms of these languages. The idea was and still is to prove if Buglarian Cyrillic can serve the entire Cyrillic character set.

What motivates you to support the Bulgarian Cyrillic form (you call it Rounded Cyrillic)? In your opinion, what is the future of the Cyrillic script?

Apparat
Font family: Apparat; Release 2020; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev

BN: I believe Bulgarians need the Bulgarian Cyrillic. Type is a cultural heritage, it is one of the ways to recreate the surrounding world. Thus type expresses our worldview, our philosophy of life. By not having the Bulgarian Cyrillic we’ll also lack our worldview.

“Type is a cultural heritage, it is one of the ways to recreate the surrounding world.”

Yes, I prefer to call the Bulgarian forms Rounded Cyrillic and the Russian forms Square Cyrillic. It describes the designs and it does not have political touch. Back in 2017, my friend Adam Twardoch came up with the idea about the name. It was based on the rounded- and square Glagolitic.

I worked several years, of course together with a number of colleagues and friends, on “the future” and now there is a standard which characters should be designed for Bulgarian Cyrillic, as well as implemented Bulgarian character set (encodings) in the font editors, there is a technical guideline on how to set the Open Type features in order to perform properly local forms in all browsers and apps. Monotype and Google fonts are including and producing the Rounded Cyillic in nearly all new releases and an increasing number of western designers are creating Bugarian Cyrillic for their typefaces. When you look back, several years ago the fonts with Bulgarian Cyrillic were scarce goods.

.loclBGR for Grotesque Typefaces
What shall be done for Bulgarian Cyrillic .loclBGR
Font family: Sofia Sans; Release 2019; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev, Ani Petrova

Тhe next step for me is to see the Rounded and Squared Cyrillic as equals. By now, the Russian forms are in default position in the fonts and Bulgarian forms on local feature or stylistic set. Soon, I’m about to release quite a big font family where the Bulgarian forms are in default position.

But I would like to see the next years in “the past”. We do have so many artefacts, books, manuscripts that are quite unexplored. We don’t really know much about the history. In fact, we don’t even have a reasonable answer to questions like why the Cyriliic was developed and why we switched to it instead of the Glagolitic.

How many Bulgarian books about typedesign do you know… four! And how many of them are translated into English – none!

In 2019, the chief architect of Sofia Zdravko Zdravkov announced that he will suggest all the labels on the streets and official documents of Sofia municipality to use a unified font standard. This font is called Sofia Sans – a co-project of Ani Petrova and Botio Nikoltchev. Did Sofia Sans become the typeface of the capital?

BN: I’m truly happy this project happened. More than 30 years after so many efforts, there is a political understanding for the need of better visual language in our cities. But this transformation happens quite slowly.

This project is also made in a large team – it started with Ani Petrova, Filip Bojadjiev and me. Then Andreas Eigendorf, Eli Hoyer and Viviana Monsalve did the mastering and produced Variable Fonts. Mario Evstatiev and I made several pixel versions of Sofia Sans for the public transport. But yes, I think meanwhile it is the typeface of the bulgarian capital city. You can see it on the tourist wayfinding system, on the street signs, on the public transport. Аlso the Bulgarian State Railways use it, I saw it also on one of the private TV channels. It seems people like it a lot.

It is worth mentioning that we published the typeface with an Open Font License, as I think such projects should be Open Source. Sofia Sans will be soon released on Google Fonts as well, and the latest versions will be always published on our Github account.

With this project I also managed to achieve a goal of mine. Bulgarian Cyrillic is in default position in the fonts.

I think with a typeface of such a largе scale – 4 widths and 11 weights and also on Google Fonts, where there is a huge amount of users, it is quite a statement.

At the beginning of 2021 you published your latest font – Apparat. How does Apparat fit in the modern visual communication – as a reinterpretation of the past or as a search for classic clean and modern drawing?

Font family: Apparat; Release 2020; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev
Font family: Quasimoda; Release 2016; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev

BN: It is clearly an interpretation of the past, actually I´m exploring Dwiggins approach to “humanise” geometric sans forms. Apparat’s design is the result of both historical research and experience gained during the design of custom fonts.

The idea was to create a large contemporary type family in four widths—Standard, Semi Condensed, Condensed, and Extra Condensed, a geometric sans serif with subtle humanistic design traits that has a well-rounded personality that stands out when used in display applications; however, the characteristic design details recede to the background not to attract unnecessary attention when using the typeface in small sizes for body copy.

Creating such a wide range has become more accessible in contemporary typeface development thanks to interpolation, which facilitates calculating intermediary steps between two extremes. But typefaces that are clearly interpolated run the risk of looking mechanic and soulless and often lack character. Having the technology available doesn’t mean it necessarily needs to be used. Apparat avoids these pitfalls by having no perfect harmony between the different weights and widths. These intentional variations lend each type style its specific personality that complements the others.

Apparat
Font family: Apparat; Release 2020; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev

Peter Bilak once said that modern fonts are a result of teamwork between many professionals. What is the future of typedesign and where is the thin line between individual and teamwork?

BN: Typedesign is and was a very consrvative field. I don’t think we will see any big revolutions in type soon.

I absolutely agree with Peter Bil’ak that modern typefaces are teamwork in a design aspect but also because they are complex products. It is not just the idea or the design. There are many script systems, there is quality assurance, there is mastering of the fonts, there are marketing materials like specimens, websites, social media communication.

So yes, for a big multilingual typefaces you need a large team of professionals in all these fields. But I also love to discuss my basic designs with friends and colleagues, to exchange ideas, to hear different points of view.

What are your plans for 2021 and beyond?

BN: I hope 2021 is more favorable to all of us! This year together with Viktor Nübel I will resume a big custom project for Cornelsen publishing house. Cornelsen are one of the main schoolbook publishers in Germany. I´m very proud that we won this design pitch and very thankful for this opportunity. We are creating a huge type sistem with sans and serif typeface, also with different widths, optical size designs etc.

It is quite interesting to work for such a big company with all the different departments like print, web, app developer who all have their own requirements on a very high quality level.

In the next few weeks, there will be a long awaited Sofia Sans variable font release on Google Fonts with OFL license.

I’m working on several new typefaces simultaneously, but I don’t want to reveal so much.

Apparat
Font family: Apparat; Release 2020; Copyright: Botio Nikoltchev
Botio Nikoltchev is a typographer, CEO and “chef” of the lettersoup fonts. Born in Sofia, he graduated in communication design in Potsdam, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin.
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Editor

Stefan Peev

Szandra Peev

Szandra Peev has been working in the field of communications and marketing for almost a decade now. Her curiosity to explore new cultures and destinations took her to Asia where for five years she worked with some of the biggest multinational companies globally. Currently, Szandra is back in Europe, leading the communications and marketing efforts for localfonts.eu and contributing as a writer in print and online media outlets.

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Ropa Soft Pro

Ropa Soft Pro
Description

Ropa Soft Pro is Ropa Sans Pro’s charming sister. While Ropa Sans is cool and somewhat technical, almost like brushed steel, the new Ropa Soft Pro family brings a warm and friendly feel, closer to smoked wood, through its rounded corners.

The medium weights of Ropa Sans Pro serve well in body text, while the thinner and bolder styles make an excellent choice for headlines. Fonts from the Ropa Soft and Sans families can be used together to create a richer mix, and the humanistic italics round up the typographic system with additional quirky flavor.

To continue with the tradition established by Ropa Sans Pro, two styles of Ropa Soft Pro are available free of charge: the smooth and understated Regular and the strikingly distinct Extra Bold Italic.

Ropa Soft Pro provides advanced typographical support with features such as case-sensitive forms, fractions, super and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of old style and lining figures, witch are in tabular and proportional widths. In addition to an extensive coverage of Latin-based languages, Ropa Soft Pro provides essential support for the Cyrillic and Greek writing systems. It is manually hinted and optimized for screens, hence it has an excellent web-font, eBooks or Apps performance.

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Botio Nikoltchev

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2016 by Botio Nikoltchev. All rights reserved.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Free fonts

Download: Lettersoup

Commercial License

Buy at: Lettersoup

Buy at: Fontspring

Ropa Sans Pro

Ropa Sans Pro
Description

Ropa Sans Pro is a sans serif font family of 8 weights plus extra designed italics and small caps, and Ropa Soft Pro’s cool sister. While the upright styles pay a distant homage to the technical aesthetics of the early-20th century DIN series, the strongly humanistic italics breathe in quirky freshness and create a unique flavor. Four styles (Ropa Sans, Ropa Sans SC, Ropa Sans Italic and Ropa Sans SC Italic) are available free of charge.

Suitable for both body and headline use, Ropa Sans Pro provides advanced typographical support with features such as case-sensitive forms, fractions, super and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of old style and lining figures, witch are in tabular and proportional widths. In addition to an extensive coverage of Latin-based languages, Ropa Sans Pro provides essential support for the Cyrillic and Greek writing systems.

It is manually hinted and optimized for screens, hence it has an excellent web-font, eBooks or Apps performance. lettersoup has also released the Latin-only basic subset of Ropa Sans Regular and Italic under the SIL Open Font License.

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Botio Nikoltchev

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2014 by Botio Nikoltchev. All rights reserved.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Free fonts

Download: Lettersoup

Commercial License

Buy at: Lettersoup

Buy at: Fontspring

Ropa Mix Pro

Ropa Mix Pro
Description

Ropa Mix Pro is the third charming sister of the Ropa Type System. While Ropa Sans is cool and somewhat technical – almost like brushed steel and Ropa Soft Pro warm and friendly – closer to smoked wood, the new Ropa Mix Pro family combines the characteristics of its both older sisters.

The medium weights of Ropa Mix Pro serve well in body text, while the thinner and bolder styles make an excellent choice for headlines. Fonts from the Ropa Mix, Soft and Sans families can be used together to create a richer mix, and the humanistic italics round up the typographic system with additional quirky flavor.

To continue with the tradition established by Ropa Sans Pro and Ropa Soft, two styles of Ropa Mix Pro are available free of charge: the smooth and understated Regular Italic and the strikingly distinct Extra Bold Italic.

Ropa Mix Pro provides advanced typographical support with features such as case-sensitive forms, fractions, super and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of old style and lining figures, witch are in tabular and proportional widths. In addition to an extensive coverage of Latin-based languages, Ropa Mix Pro provides essential support for the Cyrillic and Greek writing systems. It is manually hinted and optimized for screens, hence it has an excellent web-font, eBooks or Apps performance.

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Botio Nikoltchev

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2016 by Botio Nikoltchev. All rights reserved.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Ropa Mix Pro in Use

WEB: Консерваторъ

Free fonts

Download: Lettersoup

Commercial License

Buy at: Lettersoup

Buy at: Fontspring

Milka

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Milka

Font Sampler

(EN) The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (NL) Op brute wijze ving de schooljuf de quasi-kalme lynx. (CS) Nechť již hříšné saxofony ďáblů rozezvučí síň úděsnými tóny waltzu, tanga a quickstepu. (HU) Jó foxim és don Quijote húszwattos lámpánál ülve egy pár bűvös cipőt készít. (RO) Înjurând pițigăiat, zoofobul comandă vexat whisky și tequila. (RU) Разъяренный чтец эгоистично бьёт пятью жердями шустрого фехтовальщика. (BG) Огньове изгаряха с блуждаещи пламъци любовта човешка на Орфей. (SR) Фијуче ветар у шибљу, леди пасаже и куће иза њих и гунђа у оџацима. (EL) Ταχίστη αλώπηξ βαφής ψημένη γη, δρασκελίζει υπέρ νωθρού κυνός. Type your own text to test the font!
Description

Milka is an 8-style stencil font family created by a team of designers born within the span of almost 70 years. It is a digital expansion on an alphabet designed in 1979 by the famous Bulgarian artist Milka Peikova.

The basic Milka font is a clean stencil design, while the Aged, Baked, Brittle, Crunchy, Dry and Soft styles are inspired by stencil and letterpress techniques and expand the usefulness by adding various degrees of warmth or roughness. The Milka font family has extensive Latin, Cyrillic and Greek character set support including localized forms for Russian and Bulgarian as well as numerous OpenType features.

Since 2014, Berlin-based Bulgarian type designer Botio Nikoltchev has been working with three Bulgarian female designers (the original designer Milka Peikova, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 96, and with Ani Petrova and Anelia Pashova, both from a young generation), as well as with Berlin-based Adam Twardoch and Andreas Eigendorf to create a modern revival of Ms Peikova’s inspiring stencil alphabet. Milka Peikova (1919-2016) was one of Bulgaria’s most famous female artists whose work has influenced several generations of Bulgarian designers. During her impressive career spanning almost seven decades, she created paintings, posters, book covers, textile designs and alphabets, both individually and together with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata (1920–2012).

To try Milka in your project, download the Milka Free (uppercase-only) version!

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Milka Peikova, Botio Nikoltchev, Ani Petrova, Adam Twardoch, Andreas Eigendorf

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2016 by Botio Nikoltchev. All rights reserved.

Specimen: Milka

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova (b. 1919, Pavel, Bulgaria, d. 2016, Sofia, Bulgaria) was a famous Bulgarian artist. She created paintings, posters, book covers, portraits of famous Bulgarians, textile designs and alphabets, both individually and together with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata (1920-2012). She is a graduate of the Bulgarian National Art Academy, class of 1948. She founded Cosmos magazine and designed for the Women Today and Problems of Art magazines.
In 1979, she designed an alphabet that was extended to an 8-style Latin / Greek / Cyrillic stencil typeface—Milka (2016)—by a team of designers at Lettersoup that includes Ani Petrova, Botio Nikoltchev, Adam Twardoch and Andreas Eigendorf. The basic Milka font is a clean stencil design, while the Aged, Baked, Brittle, Crunchy, Dry and Soft styles are inspired by stencil and letterpress techniques and expand the usefulness by adding various degrees of warmth or roughness.
Milka Peikova also designed the first Bulgarian typeface for phototypesetting called Grilimil with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata. She is the recipient of the first prize for a typeface at the Bulgarian National Book Exhibition and Illustration.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Ani Petrova

Ani Petrova

Type designer, b. 1988, Sofia, Bulgaria, who works at Fontfabric, Svetoslav Simov’s typefoundry. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at The National Academy of Art in Sofia. In 2014 she obtained a Master’s degree in type design.

Adam Twardoch

Adam Twardoch

Adam Twardoch (b. 1975) was raised in Tychy, Poland, and graduated from the University of Frankfurt/Oder, Germany. He worked at for Agentur GmbH, a Frankfurt/Oder-based design firm. Since 1991, Adam has advised numerous type designers on Central European extensions of their typefaces and has created localized versions of over fifty fonts. He frequently writes on type-related matters, and is the founder of Font.org, a (now defunct) website featuring articles about typography in English and Polish. Adam Twardoch is Director of Products of FontLab (since 2004), and is typographic consultant at Linotype (since 2002) and Tiro Typeworks (since 2001), and general font specialist at MyFonts (2000-2012). Since 2012 he is based in Berlin. Adam Twardoch is working in the field of font technology, multilingual typography, CSS webfonts, Unicode and OpenType.

Andreas Eigendorf

Andreas Eigendorf

Berlin, Germany-based font engineer. Designer of several CE versions of FontFont fonts, such as the CE versions of Ole Schaefer’s Fago: FF Fago Office Sans CE, Fago Office Serif CE (2000).

Free font

Milka Free: Lettersoup

Commercial License

Buy at: Lettersoup

Buy at: Fontspring

Sofia Sans

Font Sampler

(EN) The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (NL) Op brute wijze ving de schooljuf de quasi-kalme lynx. (CS) Nechť již hříšné saxofony ďáblů rozezvučí síň úděsnými tóny waltzu, tanga a quickstepu. (HU) Jó foxim és don Quijote húszwattos lámpánál ülve egy pár bűvös cipőt készít. (RO) Înjurând pițigăiat, zoofobul comandă vexat whisky și tequila. (RU) Разъяренный чтец эгоистично бьёт пятью жердями шустрого фехтовальщика. (BG) Огньове изгаряха с блуждаещи пламъци любовта човешка на Орфей. (SR) Фијуче ветар у шибљу, леди пасаже и куће иза њих и гунђа у оџацима. (EL) Ταχίστη αλώπηξ βαφής ψημένη γη, δρασκελίζει υπέρ νωθρού κυνός. Type your own text to test the font!
Description

The story of Sofia Sans started with a phone call from Filip Boyadjiev, a colleague of ours and Ani Petrova’s former fellow student at the National Academy of Art Sofia. At the tail end of 2017, Boyadjiev informed us that his studio Fullmasters had been hired to develop a wayfinding system for helping visitors navigate Sofia’s tourist sights and attractions. That year, the Bulgarian capital had reached second place in tourism growth among European cities. The wayfinding system required a feature-rich OpenType family with a large character set including small caps, several figure styles, arrows, numerals in circles, etc. Most importantly, the fonts needed to offer support for Bulgarian Cyrillic, as all text was to be set in both Latin and Cyrillic.

Because of the modest budget and short deadline, creating a new type family from scratch for this purpose was not feasible. Fortunately, we had a viable candidate that we could expand to meet the project’s requirements: Attractive. The story of this humble font began with another phone call and a simple question. Earlier in 2017, my Bulgarian colleague Ani had asked me: “Why don’t we make a free font? A nice one, not a quick and dirty one! And let’s share it with the world.” A tiny seed was planted, but little did we know how big the project eventually would grow.
First, we needed to decide which kind of typeface to create. Going through potential type styles, we settled on a straight-sided sans. The inspiration for our design came from early-twentieth-century so-called technical sans serifs—typefaces with confident letterforms, a pronounced vertical impetus, and tense curves. We aimed to create a universally useful font family. With narrow proportions and a generous x-height, we drew a space-saving workhorse that would work well in very diverse environments: from large to small, for display and immersive reading, on-screen and in print. When looking for a name, we went back to that original question and christened our typeface Attractive.

Back to Sofia’s wayfinding system—Attractive only existed in two styles—one single weight in upright and italic—and had a limited character set. Still, it provided an excellent jumping-off point for developing an extensive type family. Fullmasters’ concept consisted of three types of elements: large and small totems containing text, directions, and map information, and signboards when only a minimum of information was necessary. We soon concluded that the typeface needed to have condensed widths too, to accommodate the different sizes of the two totems and the signboards. We also had to take into consideration the varying lengths of the names of streets, squares, parks, buildings, monuments, and other tourist sights featured on the signage. Eventually, we ended up planning a comprehensive type system in four widths with extended language support. It needed to cover Extended Latin as well as the Greek and Cyrillic alphabet because we wanted the fonts to support all three scripts used in the European Union.

Read the full story of the Sofia Sans at author’s web site LETTERSOUP

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Botio Nikoltchev, Ani Petrova

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2019 by The Sofia Sans Project Authors. All rights reserved.

License: SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Ani Petrova

Ani Petrova

Type designer, b. 1988, Sofia, Bulgaria, who works at Fontfabric, Svetoslav Simov’s typefoundry. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at The National Academy of Art in Sofia. In 2014 she obtained a Master’s degree in type design.

Free License

Download v.4.000: Sofia Sans | Google Drive

Get permission to open a file on Google Drive

• Open the file.
• On the “You need permission” page, click “Request access”.
• The admins of the site will receive your request to access the file you want to download.
• After they approve your request, you’ll be notified by email.

Where to look for the latest version: GitHub

Sofia Sans in Use
WEB: Културен център
СУ „Св. Климент Охридски“
WEB: Вестник „Телеграф“
WEB: БТА (BG)
WEB: Bulgarian News Agency (EN)
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bBox Type

bBox Type

bBox Type

Berlin-based typefoundry run by Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners. Their friends are Jenny du Carrois, Natalie Rauch, Mark Froemberg, and they cooperate with Erik Spiekermann, FontShop, Monotype, (URW)++, Adam Twardoch, Alphabet Type, Okan Tustas, The Fontpad, TN Typography, Mota Italic, Akaki Razmadze, Hasan Abu Afash, Fontef, Lettersoup, and Thomas Maier.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova (b. 1919, Pavel, Bulgaria, d. 2016, Sofia, Bulgaria) was a famous Bulgarian artist. She created paintings, posters, book covers, portraits of famous Bulgarians, textile designs and alphabets, both individually and together with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata (1920-2012). She is a graduate of the Bulgarian National Art Academy, class of 1948. She founded Cosmos magazine and designed for the Women Today and Problems of Art magazines.
In 1979, she designed an alphabet that was extended to an 8-style Latin / Greek / Cyrillic stencil typeface—Milka (2016)—by a team of designers at Lettersoup that includes Ani Petrova, Botio Nikoltchev, Adam Twardoch and Andreas Eigendorf. The basic Milka font is a clean stencil design, while the Aged, Baked, Brittle, Crunchy, Dry and Soft styles are inspired by stencil and letterpress techniques and expand the usefulness by adding various degrees of warmth or roughness.
Milka Peikova also designed the first Bulgarian typeface for phototypesetting called Grilimil with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata. She is the recipient of the first prize for a typeface at the Bulgarian National Book Exhibition and Illustration.

News

News

Media News

UK Parliament

19 March 2018

UK Parliament
The visual identity of the UK Parliament has been reviewed and updated

The visual identity of the UK Parliament has been reviewed and updated because the current version was designed for printed material and does not work successfully on digital channels.
The new visual identity can already be seen on the UK Parliament’s website and social media channels.
Unlike its predecessor, the new version works on responsively designed digital channels, i.e. where the design has to change size depending on whether it is being viewed on a computer, tablet or mobile phone. The new visual identity is also more accessible and readable than its predecessor.
The new visual identity uses ‘UK Parliament’ rather than ‘Houses of Parliament’ to highlight the role of the institution in the UK’s constitution, and to distinguish it from the building it occupies.
The two Houses share a large number of public-facing services which require a consistent parliamentary identity. The new visual identity will be implemented across these services in a phased approach, to ensure that the public can easily identify the services provided by the UK Parliament.
Design studio SomeOne explored a number of options for typefaces. It was important that the chosen typeface could portray Parliament’s vast heritage as well help to reflect it being an inclusive and modern organisation. Two typefaces were choosen: Register (A2 Type Foundry) and National (Klim Type Foundry), which work well as a combination or individually.
The House of Commons and House of Lords will continue to use their own, existing visual identities.

Read more…

Type.Today Journal

23 November 2017

First Prize now comes with enhanced versatility

Valery Golyzhenkov’s First Prize typeface has been considerably extended, to include as many as 27 styles, announcded Type.Today Journal! Three bold styles have been complemented by lighter styles and an additional line of narrowed styles. First Prize now comes with enhanced versatility and a wider range of application options.
Specimen

Read the whole article…

Type.Today Journal

October 2017

Druk
New typeface: Druk

Druk is a study in extremes, featuring the narrowest, widest, and heaviest typefaces in the Commercial Type library to date. Starting from Medium and going up to Super, Druk is uncompromisingly bold.
Specimen

Read the whole article…

Robert Slimbach: Introducing Ten Oldstyle

Adobe Typekit Blog

27 November 2017

Ten Oldstyle

Robert Slimbach: “As type usage becomes increasingly globalized, type designers are increasingly called upon to extend the language coverage of their typefaces.
As a Western type designer, I’m often challenged to design non-Latin extensions for both new and existing designs. Because Latin has always been my initial focus, I’m used to adapting non-Latin scripts to work within Western typographic standards. In doing so, I seek to balance script compatibility with script authenticity. With the Ten Oldstyle project, the tables had turned, and I was now being called upon to develop a Latin roman design to accompany the new Ten Mincho font that was being developed by Adobe …”

Robert Slimbach
Robert Slimbach

Read the whole article at Adobe Typekit Blog…

Welcome IBM Plex, Farewell Helvetica

Local Fonts News

24 November 2017

IBM launched in beta its new bespoke typeface IBM Plex and thus said farewell to Helvetic.
“When I came to IBM, explains Mike Abbink (the typeface’s designer and IBM’s executive creative director of brand experience and design), it was a big discussion: Why does IBM not have a bespoke typeface? Why are we still clinging on to Helvetica? The way we speak to people and the conversations we need to have and we’d like to have, is that still the right way to express ourselves? We should really design a typeface that really reflects our belief system and make it relevant to people now. Helvetica is a child of a particular sect of modernist thinking that’s gone today.”
So, Mike Abbink and his team made it. The new IBM bespoke font family is IBM Plex. And it is free. Really! Free to download, free to use. Free under SIL Open Font License. Go to Github and you will realize that this is true.
The new visual history of IBM that starts with IBM Plex is open minded to people.
“If shoe stores or coffee shops or small businesses are using it for their identity, awesome,” Abbink says in the video. “They’re agreeing they want to be part of a discussion around machines and how they’re going to evolve and progress our world.”

See also: Carbon Design System

IBM Plex on Github…

Ilya Ruderman for Yandex Sans and Serif

Ilya Ruderman

18 November 2017

Ilya Ruderman tells about the creation of a Yandex Sans and Yandex Serif fonts (the video is in Russian).

More…

Pacifico now has Cyrillic Script

Google Fonts

1 November 2017

Pacifico
Pacifico

Aloha! Pacifico is an original and fun brush script handwriting font by Vernon Adams which was inspired by the 1950s American surf culture in 2011. It was redrawn by Jacques Le Bailly at Baron von Fonthausen in 2016. It was expanded to Cyrillic by Botjo Nikoltchev and Ani Petrova at Lettersoup in 2017.

More…

Bw Modelica goes pan-European

BwType News

9 August 2017

Bw Modelica

Please welcome the upgraded Bw Modelica LGC, which stands for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Initially released supporting all Latin European languages, we just expanded the character set to cover Greek and Cyrillic scripts (including Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian letterform model). The Bw Modelica font family is available in different subsets so you don’t have to license for characters you are never going to use. It also has a dedicated microsite where you can test all the different character sets available in one place. Designed by Alberto Romanos, Bw Modelica is a minimal, robust, reliable & pragmatic geometric sans. Its clean shapes and generous x-height makes it a very competent typeface for both, display and body copy purposes.

More…

Font-family names in IE 6-8

Adobe Typekit Blog

27 June 2017

Sean McBridge announced on Adobe Typekit Blog an improvement in support for older versions of Internet Explorer. The new published kits now serves additional variation-specific font-family names to IE 6-8. This makes it possible to work around bugs in these browsers that are triggered when multiple weights and styles of a single font family are used in the same kit, explain Sean McBridge. Most importantly, these additional font-family names make it possible to use more than four weights and styles of a single font family in IE 6-8.

Read the whole article at Adobe Typekit Blog…

Most Appreciated Projects on Behance

Ailerons Typeface on BehanceMoon - Free Font on BehanceCoves - Free Font on Behance

Media News

Guardian

15 January 2018

Guardian
The Guardian with the design experts Commercial Type introduce a font called Guardian Headline

On Monday 15 January, The Guardian unveil a new look theguardian.com and Guardian app in line with the launch of The Guardian in tabloid print format. Katharine Viner: We have thought carefully about how our use of typography, colour and images can support and enhance Guardian journalism. We have introduced a font called Guardian Headline that is simple, confident and impactful. This was a collaboration with the design experts Commercial Type, who created the original Guardian Egyptian, and is easier to read. We’re using a range of energetic colours, and the much-loved Guardian visual wit and style remain at the heart of the look. The masthead has a renewed strength and confidence to represent the Guardian’s place and mission in these challenging times.

Read the whole article…

Type Journal

14 December 2017

Yuri Yarmola
An interview with Yuri Yarmola on font designer tools, Photoshop effect and FontLab VI

in connection with the completion of the FontLab VI and its release for sale the Russian online magazine ‘Type Journal’ publishes an extensive and very curious interview with Yuri Yarmola (text in Russian).

Read the whole interview…

GlyphMorf

Local Fonts News

30 November 2017

GlyphMorf

Thom Janssen introduced on Github the GlyphMorf. GlyphMorf is an experimental way for making parametric adjustments for a font, in RoboFont. Downloading GlyphMorf Extension is free. Using GlyphMorf in a professional environment is not.
GlyphMorf analyses the glyph drawing and extract parameters out of it. By redrawing the glyph with different parameters you get different new glyphs / fonts. The drawing should be so that every point on the contour can be paired with an other point in the same contour on the other side of the stem/stroke. This means that all contours must have an even number of points. The starting point marks the beginning of the inner or outer part of the contour, depends a bit on the design. See image, the selected (orange) segments show the first half of the contours.

GlyphMorf

More…

Nunito Sans with Cyrillic Extended

Local Fonts News

29 November 2017

Nunito Sans

Ninito Sans is coming soon with Cyrillic Extended thanks to Alexei Vanyashin.

More…

November fonts selection

Local Fonts News

27 November 2017

TT TunnelsTT Tunnels by Typetype is a display sans font family. This typeface has five styles.

AsketAsket by Elena Kowalski is a sans serif typeface with Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

Bw Modelica LGCBw Modelica LGC by Alberto Romanos is a sans serif typeface with Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.

AdysAdys by Kristina Kostova is designed to help people who suffer from dyslexia in minor stages. However, it does not create any discomfort for people who do not have any specific symptoms. This is what makes it suitable for widespread use.

AvertaAverta by Kostas Bartsokas comes in eight weights with matching italics and supports over two hundred languages with an extended Latin, Cyrillic (Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian/Macedonian alternates), Greek and Vietnamese character set.

CombaxCombax by Vasil Stanev is a text font with a wide language support and special care for localization. Featuring Cyrillic and also extended Latin, it’s one weight is rich in ligatures, punctuation and symbols and also careful coding. Playful yet robust, it is the perfect choice when you are loking for a Comic Sans replacement.

Wind

Typotheque

23 November 2017

Typotheque announced the issue of Wind – a capital-only display typeface by Hansje van Halem for intricate headlines, and optical effects.
Wind is the first published typeface of Amsterdam-based book and graphic designer Hansje van Halem. Like her other work, which is highly experimental, it uses vivid colours and intricately detailed patterns to create unexpected optical illusions, and its various layers can be combined and overlaid to create vibrant, hypnotic patterns.

More…

OpenType Design Variation Axis Tags

Microsoft, Github

22 November 2017

This GitHub repository is used for discussion and review of proposals for registration of OpenType design-variation axis tags.

Why register a design-variation axis?

OpenType supports custom or “foundry-defined” axes, allowing any font developer to create a font with whatever axes they wish (provided the syntactic requirements for a custom tag are met). So, why bother going through the process to register an axis? The short answer is that it can provide better experiences for end users and create opportunities for font and application developers.

While a font family design can be varied in any number of arbitrary ways, there are some kinds of variation that can seem useful and interesting to many different foundries. With custom axes, different foundries could create families with the same kinds of design variants, but because they have each identified the same variants in different ways, applications have no way to interact with particular variants, and users have inconsistent experiences.

A registered axis provides two key benefits over custom axes:

  • It fosters conventionality and familiarity.
  • It facilitates interoperability.

More…

Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander

WIKIPEDIA

1 November 2017

Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander
Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander

Review the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander at British Library.

More…

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Pacifico

Pacifico

Font Sampler

(EN) The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (NL) Op brute wijze ving de schooljuf de quasi-kalme lynx. (CS) Nechť již hříšné saxofony ďáblů rozezvučí síň úděsnými tóny waltzu, tanga a quickstepu. (HU) Jó foxim és don Quijote húszwattos lámpánál ülve egy pár bűvös cipőt készít. (RO) Înjurând pițigăiat, zoofobul comandă vexat whisky și tequila. (RU) Разъяренный чтец эгоистично бьёт пятью жердями шустрого фехтовальщика. (BG) Огньове изгаряха с блуждаещи пламъци любовта човешка на Орфей. (SR) Фијуче ветар у шибљу, леди пасаже и куће иза њих и гунђа у оџацима. (EL) Ταχίστη αλώπηξ βαφής ψημένη γη, δρασκελίζει υπέρ νωθρού κυνός. Type your own text to test the font!
  Description

Aloha! Pacifico is an original and fun brush script handwriting font by Vernon Adams which was inspired by the 1950s American surf culture in 2011. It was redrawn by Jacques Le Bailly at Baron von Fonthausen in 2016. It was expanded to Cyrillic by Botjo Nikoltchev and Ani Petrova at Lettersoup in 2017.

Vernon practiced typeface design from 2007 to 2014. A lifelong artist, during this time he eagerly explored designing type for the cloud-based era. His work spans all genres, from lively script faces to workhorse text families and operating system UI. Vernon graduated with an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading and lives in California. His designs are mostly published as open source Google Fonts and his favorite projects include Oxygen Mono, Monda, and Bowlby One. Follow his story at www.sansoxygen.com.

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Principal design: Vernon Adams

Design: Jacques Le Bailly, Botjo Nikoltchev, Ani Petrova

Publisher: Vernon Adams

Copyright 2011 by Vernon Adams. All rights reserved.

License: SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE

Vernon Adams

Vernon Adams

Vernon Adams (born England, 1967) was a furniture restorer, woodcarver and typeface designer. On August 24, 2016 Vernon Adams passed away from injuries sustained in a scooter accident in May of 2014. New Typography was his type design site. Vernon graduated in 2007 with an MA in type design from the University of Reading and lived in San Clemente, California.

Free License

Download v.3.001: Pacifico | Google Drive

Font development: GitHub

If you like this site and find it useful, help us to make it better by giving feedback, suggesting improvements or by donation.

Donate

Milka Free

Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka
Milka

Font Sampler

(EN) The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (NL) Op brute wijze ving de schooljuf de quasi-kalme lynx. (CS) Nechť již hříšné saxofony ďáblů rozezvučí síň úděsnými tóny waltzu, tanga a quickstepu. (HU) Jó foxim és don Quijote húszwattos lámpánál ülve egy pár bűvös cipőt készít. (RO) Înjurând pițigăiat, zoofobul comandă vexat whisky și tequila. (RU) Разъяренный чтец эгоистично бьёт пятью жердями шустрого фехтовальщика. (BG) Огньове изгаряха с блуждаещи пламъци любовта човешка на Орфей. (SR) Фијуче ветар у шибљу, леди пасаже и куће иза њих и гунђа у оџацима. (EL) Ταχίστη αλώπηξ βαφής ψημένη γη, δρασκελίζει υπέρ νωθρού κυνός. Type your own text to test the font!
Description

Milka is an 8-style stencil font family created by a team of designers born within the span of almost 70 years. It is a digital expansion on an alphabet designed in 1979 by the famous Bulgarian artist Milka Peikova.

The basic Milka font is a clean stencil design, while the Aged, Baked, Brittle, Crunchy, Dry and Soft styles are inspired by stencil and letterpress techniques and expand the usefulness by adding various degrees of warmth or roughness. The Milka font family has extensive Latin, Cyrillic and Greek character set support including localized forms for Russian and Bulgarian as well as numerous OpenType features.

Since 2014, Berlin-based Bulgarian type designer Botio Nikoltchev has been working with three Bulgarian female designers (the original designer Milka Peikova, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 96, and with Ani Petrova and Anelia Pashova, both from a young generation), as well as with Berlin-based Adam Twardoch and Andreas Eigendorf to create a modern revival of Ms Peikova’s inspiring stencil alphabet. Milka Peikova (1919-2016) was one of Bulgaria’s most famous female artists whose work has influenced several generations of Bulgarian designers. During her impressive career spanning almost seven decades, she created paintings, posters, book covers, textile designs and alphabets, both individually and together with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata (1920–2012).

To try Milka in your project, download the Milka Free (uppercase-only) version at MyFonts!

Design, Publisher, Copyright, License

Design: Milka Peikova, Botio Nikoltchev , Ani Petrova , Adam Twardoch , Andreas Eigendorf

Publisher: Lettersoup

Copyright 2016 by Botio Nikoltchev. All rights reserved.

Specimen: Milka

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova

Milka Peikova (b. 1919, Pavel, Bulgaria, d. 2016, Sofia, Bulgaria) was a famous Bulgarian artist. She created paintings, posters, book covers, portraits of famous Bulgarians, textile designs and alphabets, both individually and together with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata (1920-2012). She is a graduate of the Bulgarian National Art Academy, class of 1948. She founded Cosmos magazine and designed for the Women Today and Problems of Art magazines.
In 1979, she designed an alphabet that was extended to an 8-style Latin / Greek / Cyrillic stencil typeface—Milka (2016)—by a team of designers at Lettersoup that includes Ani Petrova, Botio Nikoltchev, Adam Twardoch and Andreas Eigendorf. The basic Milka font is a clean stencil design, while the Aged, Baked, Brittle, Crunchy, Dry and Soft styles are inspired by stencil and letterpress techniques and expand the usefulness by adding various degrees of warmth or roughness.
Milka Peikova also designed the first Bulgarian typeface for phototypesetting called Grilimil with her husband Georgi Kovachev-Grishata. She is the recipient of the first prize for a typeface at the Bulgarian National Book Exhibition and Illustration.

Botio Nikoltchev

Botio Nikoltchev

Botjo Nikoltchev, b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria. Botio studied graphic and type design in Potsdam. He is living and working as a freelance designer in Berlin. He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (Primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, he set up the commercial typefoundry Lettersoup.

Ani Petrova

Ani Petrova

Type designer, b. 1988, Sofia, Bulgaria, who works at Fontfabric, Svetoslav Simov’s typefoundry. She completed her Bachelor’s degree at The National Academy of Art in Sofia. In 2014 she obtained a Master’s degree in type design.

Adam Twardoch

Adam Twardoch

Adam Twardoch (b. 1975) was raised in Tychy, Poland, and graduated from the University of Frankfurt/Oder, Germany. He worked at for Agentur GmbH, a Frankfurt/Oder-based design firm. Since 1991, Adam has advised numerous type designers on Central European extensions of their typefaces and has created localized versions of over fifty fonts. He frequently writes on type-related matters, and is the founder of Font.org, a (now defunct) website featuring articles about typography in English and Polish. Adam Twardoch is Director of Products of FontLab (since 2004), and is typographic consultant at Linotype (since 2002) and Tiro Typeworks (since 2001), and general font specialist at MyFonts (2000-2012). Since 2012 he is based in Berlin. Adam Twardoch is working in the field of font technology, multilingual typography, CSS webfonts, Unicode and OpenType.

Andreas Eigendorf

Andreas Eigendorf

Berlin, Germany-based font engineer. Designer of several CE versions of FontFont fonts, such as the CE versions of Ole Schaefer’s Fago: FF Fago Office Sans CE, Fago Office Serif CE (2000).

Free font download (Milka Free)

Where to download: Lettersoup

Commercial License

Where to buy: Lettersoup

Where to buy: Fontspring

Where to buy: MyFonts

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Bulgarian Cyrillic Feature Locl

Use the tabs for additional navigation.

Bulgarian Cyrillic in Vollkorn
Bulgarian Cyrillic in Vollkorn

  Bulgarian Cyrillic in Vollkorn

Class substitution
feature locl {

script cyrl;
language BGR exclude_dflt;
sub @locl3 by @locl4;
# This is a comment.
# @locl3: uni0414 uni0418 uni0419 uni040D uni041B uni0424 uni0432 uni0433 uni0434 uni0436 uni0437 uni0438 uni0439 uni045D uni043A uni043B uni043D uni043F uni0442 uni0447 uni0446 uni0448 uni0449 uni044C uni044A uni044E
# @locl4: uni0414.loclBGR uni0418.loclBGR uni0419.loclBGR uni040D.loclBGR uni041B.loclBGR uni0424.loclBGR uni0432.loclBGR uni0433.loclBGR uni0434.loclBGR uni0436.loclBGR uni0437.loclBGR uni0438.loclBGR uni0439.loclBGR uni045D.loclBGR uni043A.loclBGR uni043B.loclBGR uni043D.loclBGR uni043F.loclBGR uni0442.loclBGR uni0447.loclBGR uni0446.loclBGR uni0448.loclBGR uni0449.loclBGR uni044C.loclBGR uni044A.loclBGR uni044E.loclBGR

} locl;

 
 

Unicode name to Unicode name substitution
feature locl {

script cyrl;
language BGR exclude_dflt;
sub [uni0414 uni0418 uni0419 uni040D uni041B uni0424 uni0432 uni0433 uni0434 uni0436 uni0437 uni0438 uni0439 uni045D uni043A uni043B uni043D uni043F uni0442 uni0447 uni0446 uni0448 uni0449 uni044C uni044A uni044E] by [uni0414.loclBGR uni0418.loclBGR uni0419.loclBGR uni040D.loclBGR uni041B.loclBGR uni0424.loclBGR uni0432.loclBGR uni0433.loclBGR uni0434.loclBGR uni0436.loclBGR uni0437.loclBGR uni0438.loclBGR uni0439.loclBGR uni045D.loclBGR uni043A.loclBGR uni043B.loclBGR uni043D.loclBGR uni043F.loclBGR uni0442.loclBGR uni0447.loclBGR uni0446.loclBGR uni0448.loclBGR uni0449.loclBGR uni044C.loclBGR uni044A.loclBGR uni044E.loclBGR];

} locl;

 

Bulgarian Cyrillic in Vollkorn
Bulgarian Cyrillic in Vollkorn
 
 

  How to switch on Bulgarian Cyrillic in a website

HTML Language Code Reference

The HTML lang attribute can be used to declare the language of a Web page or a portion of a Web page. This is meant to assist search engines and browsers.

According to the W3C recommendation you should declare the primary language for each Web page with the lang attribute inside the tag, like this:

<html lang=”en”>

</html>

 
or like this:

<html lang=”en-GB”>

</html>

 
The code lang=”en-GB” means English (United Kingdom). The code lang=”en-US” means English (United States). See others language definition codes at GitHub.
 
In XHTML, the language is declared inside the tag as follows:

<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” lang=”en” xml:lang=”en”>

</html>

 

HTML Language Code Reference for Russian language
<html lang=”ru”>

</html>
Local Features lang="ru"
Local Features lang=”ru”

Please click here to see the picture enlarged.
The site use Centrale Sans font by Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova, Typedepot

 
Notice that it doesn’t matter whether the language in the HTML page is really Russian or other one.
 

Local Features lang="ru"
Local Features lang=”ru”

Please click here to see the picture enlarged.
The site use Centrale Sans font by Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova, Typedepot

 

HTML Language Code Reference for Bulgarian language
<html lang=”bg”>

</html>
Local Features lang=”bg”
Local Features lang=”bg”

Please click here to see the picture enlarged.
The site use Centrale Sans font by Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova, Typedepot

 

HTML Mixed Language Code Reference

You can use language code reference on a portion of a Web page either.

<p lang=”bg”>

</p>
Local Features lang=”bg” in a paragraph
Local Features lang=”bg” in a paragraph

Please click here to see the picture enlarged.
The site use Centrale Sans font by Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova, Typedepot

 

<span lang=”bg”>

</span>
Local Features lang=”bg” in a span
Local Features lang=”bg” in a span

Please click here to see the picture enlarged.
The site use Centrale Sans font by Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova, Typedepot

 

Other sources

Tags: Language System Tags
OpenType: Local Features (OpenType code)
Fontfabric: A closer look at the Bulgarian stylistic variation of the Cyrillic script
Todor Georgiev: The Cyrillic Alphabet Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Krasen Krastev: Bulgarian Cyrillic as a Mark of Identity. “Culture” Magazine. Issue 20
Eugene Yukechev: On the ap­pear­an­ce and de­vel­op­ment of Cyril­lic let­ter­forms
Glyphs Forum: Multiple identical (cyrillic) glyphs in Font
Glyphs Forum: Local Feature for Bulgarian Cyrillic?
GitHub: Character set should include Cyrillic alternates for non-Russian support
Lettersoup: What shall be done for Bulgarian Cyrillic .loclBGR

 

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Magazines and Blogs
Other Resources

  UNICODE

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TYPE DESIGN IN BULGARIA
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RUSSIAN FOUNDRIES

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Botio Nikoltchev: What Shall Be Done for Bulgarian Cyrillic .loclBGR

In this article I would like to describe the differences between the Bulgarian and Russian Cyrillic. Then I will list the characters you have to include in your fonts if you like to make Bulgarian Cyrillic and the different ways you can make it work with the Open Type features. Lets start with which Letters are different between Russian and Bulgarian Cyrillic. I will specify them for both Sans and Serif typefaces.

.loclBGR for Grotesque Typefaces

Russian Cyrillic
А
Б
В
Г
Д
Е
Ё
Ж
З
И
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
Ъ
Ы
Ь
Э
Ю
Я
Ѝ

а
б
в
г
д
е
ё
ж
з
и
й
к
л
м
н
о
п
р
с
т
у
ф
х
ц
ч
ш
щ
ъ
ы
ь
э
ю
я
ѝ

Bulgarian Modern Cyrillic Script
А
Б
В
Г
Д
Е
Ж
З
И
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
Ъ
Ь
Ю
Я
Ѝ

а
б
в
г
д
е
ж
з
и
й
к
л
м
н
о
п
р
с
т
у
ф
х
ц
ч
ш
щ
ъ
ь
ю
я
ѝ

The red characters are in Russian style and the orange ones in Bulgarian. Please do not forget to include the letters Ѝ and ѝ letter. These characters are needed in the Bulgarian language. The following characters are all you have to include for loclBGR in your Sans Fonts. Some of the glyphs don’t have to be redesigned in Italics.

In case you are using SAFARI please see this POP-UP window or follow this LINK.

  Д (uni0414) is optional
  Ѝ (uni040D)
  Л (uni041B)
  Ф (uni0424) is optional
  в (uni0432)
  г (uni0433)
  д (uni0434)
  ж (uni0436)
  з (uni0437)
  и (uni0438) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  й (uni0439) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  ѝ (uni045D) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  к (uni043A)
  л (uni043B)
  п (uni043F) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  т (uni0442) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  ц (uni0446)
  ш (uni0448) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  щ (uni0449) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic 
  ю (uni044E)

.loclBGR for Serif Typefaces

Russian Cyrillic
А
Б
В
Г
Д
Е
Ё
Ж
З
И
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
Ъ
Ы
Ь
Э
Ю
Я
Ѝ

а
б
в
г
д
е
ё
ж
з
и
й
к
л
м
н
о
п
р
с
т
у
ф
х
ц
ч
ш
щ
ъ
ы
ь
э
ю
я
ѝ

Bulgarian Modern Cyrillic Script
А
Б
В
Г
Д
Е
Ж
З
И
Й
К
Л
М
Н
О
П
Р
С
Т
У
Ф
Х
Ц
Ч
Ш
Щ
Ъ
Ь
Ю
Я
Ѝ

а
б
в
г
д
е
ж
з
и
й
к
л
м
н
о
п
р
с
т
у
ф
х
ц
ч
ш
щ
ъ
ь
ю
я
ѝ

 

In case you are using SAFARI please see this POP-UP window or follow this LINK.

.loclBGR for Serif Typefaces

The following characters-list have to be included in your Serif Fonts. Please consider that the Serif fonts list is a little bit longer. Some of the glyphs don’t have to be redesigned in Italics.

  Д (uni0414) is optional
  И (uni0418)
  Й (uni0419)
  Ѝ (uni040D)
  Л (uni041B)
  Ф (uni0424) is optional

  в (uni0432)
  г (uni0433)
  д (uni0434)
  ж (uni0436)
  з (uni0437)
  и (uni0438) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  й (uni0439) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ѝ (uni045D) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  к (uni043A)
  л (uni043B)
  н (uni043D)
  п (uni043F) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  т (uni0442) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ц (uni0446) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ч (uni0447) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ш (uni0448) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  щ (uni0449) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ь (uni044C) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ъ (uni044A) usually there is no need to redesign in Italic
  ю (uni044E)

Historical forms

If you like you can also include some historical forms. They are important for scientific and old texts set before the 1945 spelling reform.

  Ѫ (uni046A)
  ѫ (uni046B)
  Ѣ (uni0462)
  ѣ (uni0463)

How to make .loclBGR work in OpenType

In my opinion there are two ways to make Bulgarian Cyrillic work in your OpenTypes. The first way is use Open Type ’locl’ feature (Localized Forms). You have to add a .loclBGR suffix to all characters which have Bulgarian Cyrillic forms. The second way is to define them as a Stylistic Set. I recommend implementing both features so you can assure that the Bulgarian forms will work properly in all Apps and will also give the opportunity to non-Bulgarian designers to use them without switching the spell check of the text they are working on. So let’s code a little. First you have to make sure that you have the language system in your Font:

 languagesystem cyrl dflt;
 languagesystem cyrl BGR; 

This is how the script should look like for local Bulgarian feature (locl)

  feature locl{ 
  script cyrl;
  language BGR ;
   sub uni0414 by uni0414.loclBGR;
   sub uni041B by uni041B.loclBGR;
   sub uni0424 by uni0424.loclBGR;
   sub uni0432 by uni0432.loclBGR;
   sub uni0433 by uni0433.loclBGR;
   sub uni0434 by uni0434.loclBGR;
   sub uni0436 by uni0436.loclBGR;
   sub uni0437 by uni0437.loclBGR;
   sub uni0438 by uni0438.loclBGR;
   sub uni0439 by uni0439.loclBGR;
   sub uni045D by uni045D.loclBGR;
   sub uni043A by uni043A.loclBGR;
   sub uni043B by uni043B.loclBGR;
   sub uni043F by uni043F.loclBGR;
   sub uni0442 by uni0442.loclBGR;
   sub uni0446 by uni0446.loclBGR;
   sub uni0448 by uni0448.loclBGR;
   sub uni0449 by uni0449.loclBGR;
   sub uni044E by uni044E.loclBGR;
  }locl;

Of course if you like your code to be cleaner, you can make two classes. For example, locl1 class for the Russian characters and locl2 class for the Bulgarian ones. Et voilà! The script looks like this:

  feature locl{ 
  script cyrl;
  language BGR ;
   sub @locl1 by @locl2;
  }locl;

Then you can do the same for the Stylistic Set. For example, I decided to make the Bulgarian Cyrillic as stylistic set 04 (.ss04). I’m using the “ss04” (Stylistic Set 04) in my example but of course you can use any stylistic set from 01 to 20, so in your case it can be “ss01” or “ss07”, depending on how many stylistic sets your font will have.
Please note that it is not necessary to duplicate the characters which you have already made as .lclBGR and then rename them with suffix .ss04.
For that purpose we will just make a little hack in the code:

  feature ss04{ 
   sub uni0414 by uni0414.loclBGR;
   sub uni041B by uni041B.loclBGR;
   sub uni0424 by uni0424.loclBGR;
   sub uni0432 by uni0432.loclBGR;
   sub uni0433 by uni0433.loclBGR;
   sub uni0434 by uni0434.loclBGR;
   sub uni0436 by uni0436.loclBGR;
   sub uni0437 by uni0437.loclBGR;
   sub uni0438 by uni0438.loclBGR;
   sub uni0439 by uni0439.loclBGR;
   sub uni045D by uni045D.loclBGR;
   sub uni043A by uni043A.loclBGR;
   sub uni043B by uni043B.loclBGR;
   sub uni043F by uni043F.loclBGR;
   sub uni0442 by uni0442.loclBGR;
   sub uni0446 by uni0446.loclBGR;
   sub uni0448 by uni0448.loclBGR;
   sub uni0449 by uni0449.loclBGR;
   sub uni044E by uni044E.loclBGR;
  }ss04

For sure you can use also classes:

  feature ss04{
   sub @locl1 by @locl2;
  } ss04

Marks in the Cyrillic Script

Some characters in the Cyrillic script need marks but they do not have a Unicode and actually do not exist as precomposed characters. A nice way to make them work is using Combining Marks. Please note that in that case the kerning might have some issues. I will talk about them a little bit later.

  CyrillicBrevecomb (no unicode)
  Gravecomb (uni0300)
  Acutecomb (uni0301)

The following characters need Anchors so that the combining marks will be positioned properly:

  А (uni0410)
  Г (uni0413)
  Е (uni0415)
  З (uni0417)
  И (uni0418)
  К (uni041A)
  О (uni041E)
  С (uni0421)
  У (uni0423)
  Ъ (uni042A)
  Ю (uni042E)
  Я (uni042F)
  а (uni0430)
  г (uni0433)
  е (uni0435)
  з (uni0437)
  и (uni0438)
  к (uni043A)
  о (uni043E)
  с (uni0441)
  у (uni0443)
  ъ (uni044A)
  ю (uni044E)
  я (uni044F)

You can also create them as precomposed characters and then access them via OT features. In my opinion this method works better but makes the font size bigger. First you have to define three lookups in the Feature Panel/Prefix (if you work with Glyphs App. In FontLab the “prefix” is the down square in the OpenType panel. In the following code example in the last lookup are the actual precomposed characters.

  lookup loclBGRa{
    sub uni0433 by uni0433.loclBGR;
    sub uni043A by uni043A.loclBGR;
    ...
  }loclBGRa;

  lookup loclBGRb{
    sub uni0453 by uni0433.loclBGR acutecomb;
    sub uni045C by uni043A.loclBGR acutecomb;    
    ...
  }loclBGRb;

  lookup loclBGRc{
    sub uni0433.loclBGR acutecomb by uni0433_acutecomb.loclBGR;
    sub uni043A.loclBGR acutecomb by uni043A_acutecomb.loclBGR;
    ...
  }loclBGRc;

Ok, then we can use this lookups in every feature that we need. In our particular case we defined Bulgarian Cyrillic as .loclBGR and .ss04. For the local feature the code looks like this:

  feature locl{
    script cyrl;
    language BGR;
    lookup loclBGRa;
    lookup loclBGRb;
    lookup loclBGRc;
  }locl;

And for the stylisic set 04 like this:

  feature ss04{
    lookup loclBGRa;
    lookup loclBGRb;
    lookup loclBGRc;
  }ss04;

The Future

Let’s talk a little bit about the future. Cyrillic Script is still evolving nowadays. The type-designers go different ways to solve its issues. That is one of the main reasons why we have Bulgarian and Russian Cyrillic. Actually I am not a big fan of this division. In my opinion there is just one Cyrillic with different solutions, which is quite nice in the complex world we live in. I often hear from Russian and Western type-designers that they do like the so-called Bulgarian forms. And that’s why I asked myself how would it be possible to use both designs not just as local forms but as the entire Cyrillic Extended. One way would be to include all the characters which have different forms:

  ѓ ќ ґ ғ җ ҙ қ ҝ ҡ

double (with Russian and Bulgarian form) and then define them in the features as I described above. This will expand the Font and increase the file size. Another possibility or idea, which is based on the ttfdiet tool made by Adam Twardoch and Karsten Lücke, would be to use the ‘ccmp’ feature, but which can also be used in other features like “locl” and ”ss04”. Then the feature code will look like this:

  feature locl{
    script cyrl; 
    language BGR;
    lookup loclBGRa{
     sub uni0433 by uni0433.loclBGR;  
     sub uni043A by uni043A.loclBGR; ... 
    } loclBGRa;   
    lookup loclBGRb {  
     sub uni0453 by uni0433.loclBGR acutecomb;  
     sub uni045C by uni043A.loclBGR acutecomb; ... 
    }loclBGRb;
   }locl;

Many years ago in a hardware store I read this quote: “ If your computer does not cause any problems it is already too old.” That seems to be true for all new developments. The method above is not an exception. The main issue is with the kerning. For example, we have the character ”ӑ” which is actually compounded from two glyphs: the Cyrillic letter “a” (uni0430) and the cyrillic breve “˘” That means that the text-engine will not interpret the combinations as a “letter, a-breve, letter” but as “letter, a-cyrillic, breve-cyrillic, letter”. This causes two types of problems with the kerning. The first problem appears with combinations like ”T,ӑ-cyrillic” which will be interpreted as “T, a-cyrillic, breve-cyrillic” by the text-engine. This means that we will have the kerning value of ”T,a-cyrillic” thus the “T” might end rather close to the breve – . Second problem is with combinations like ”ӑk” which will be interpreted as “a-cyrillic, breve- cyrillic, k-cyrillic” as a result we will have no kerning (it does not make any sense to kern combining marks). There is a possibility to set „lookupflag IgnoreMarks;“ in the kerning feature. The marks between two characters will be ignored from the text engine. In this particular example we will have the kerning value of ”ak”.Another approach is the so called contextual kerning “kern ‘Ta’ by +20 if ‘a’ is followed by a combining Mark”. The only App which provides UI for making contextual kerning is Microsoft VOLT. So as you see we still have a lot to do for the Cyrillic Script in technical and in design aspect.

8 July 2016

Botio Nikoltchev

Originally published on LETTERSOUP.DE
Republished with the permission of the author