Arsenica is a serif typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro for Zetafonts, and developed by a design team including Mario De Libero, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. [...] Arsenica is a serif typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro for Zetafonts, and developed by a design team including Mario De Libero, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. The design of Arsenica takes its inspiration from italian poster design at the beginning of the century, a time where typography, lettering and illustration where closely interwoven. Dawning nationalist movements, rather than using the modernist language, pushed on traditional Old Style letterforms often imbued with Art Nouveau and Deco sensibility. Artists like Giorgio Muggiani not only illustrated posters for Cinzano, Pirelli and Rinascente, but also provided logo design for newspapers, like "Il Popolo d'Italia". Starting from this mix of eclectic influences, Canovaro first developed the Arsenica Antiqua family, designed as display typeface that keeps the original Old Style low-contrast, wide proportions and quirky stylistic inventions. These where then distilled in a high contrast, Arsenica Display family, expanding the weight range to include both poster, ultrabold weights and lighter weights that give the design a distinct calligraphic flavour. Bringing the letterforms into contemporary taste meant also developing alternate letterforms that were included in the Arsenica Alternate family, that drops the art nouveau details in favour of a more controlled modern serif aestethic. Finally, Arsenica Text was developed by expanding the design space in the optical size axis, creating a low contrast, strongly readable old style typeface family, with a reduced weight set, oriented for long body copy typesetting. The final result is a superfamily of 41 weights, covering the design space with an expanded charset of over nine hundred glyphs, with full coverage of over two hundred languages using latin and cyrillic alphabets. All the weights of Arsenica come with a full set of open type features allowing to explore its vintage-inspired visual inventions thanks to stylistic sets, discretionary ligatures, contestual alternates and positional numbers. Two variable typefaces are included in the full family, allowing you to explore the design space and precisely control not only the weight but also the optical size design variations.

Blacker mono was developed out of a brief by Isabella Ahmadzadeh by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Francesco Canovaro for the editorial project "A beautiful mistake" by OFFF Tlv in 2022. It is a monospaced version of our typeface Blacker, bringing its "evil serif" aesthetics in the realm of typewriter and coding typefaces. In designing these, usually the letterforms are deformed to better fill the space, but in Blacker Mono only the serifs are [...] Blacker mono was developed out of a brief by Isabella Ahmadzadeh by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Francesco Canovaro for the editorial project "A beautiful mistake" by OFFF Tlv in 2022. It is a monospaced version of our typeface Blacker, bringing its "evil serif" aesthetics in the realm of typewriter and coding typefaces. In designing these, usually the letterforms are deformed to better fill the space, but in Blacker Mono only the serifs are modified to balance letters, while letter skeletons are kept consistent with the ones of the original Blacker family. This gives the typeface an uneven, unexpected rhythm, underlined by the unusual choice of providing three optical sizes and some extreme display weights - both uncommon choices in monospaced fonts. The resulting typefamily is thought for use in editorial situations where readability must be married by a strong personality, and is complemented by all the wide array of Open Type features that are present in all Blacker variants, from positional numerals to small case letters and alternates.

The design of new typefaces often involves a delicate dance between honoring tradition and embracing modernity. Mario De Libero's Claus stands as a testament to this artistic interplay, as it emerges as a reinvention of the classic Stunt Roman, a hand-lettering alphabet masterfully crafted by the penmanship virtuoso Ross Frederick George. First gracing the pages of the Speedball Text Book in 1929, this hand-lettered serif alphabet blended [...] The design of new typefaces often involves a delicate dance between honoring tradition and embracing modernity. Mario De Libero's Claus stands as a testament to this artistic interplay, as it emerges as a reinvention of the classic Stunt Roman, a hand-lettering alphabet masterfully crafted by the penmanship virtuoso Ross Frederick George. First gracing the pages of the Speedball Text Book in 1929, this hand-lettered serif alphabet blended the classical beauty of Old Style letterforms with the narrow proportions and fluid elegance of Art Deco. Inspired by its iconic proportions, Mario De Libero embarked on the design journey that birthed Claus. With a keen eye for harmonizing classic charm with a brutalist twist, De Libero introduced etched serifs and calligraphic quirks, subtly adapting the letterforms to a more contemporary, digital taste. The result is a festive typeface that effortlessly transitions between traditional and modern design landscapes. Claus comes with a full range of OpenType features, boasting quirky ligatures, design alternates, and a Small Caps version. This versatility ensures seamless integration into diverse projects, from editorial layouts to luxury branding. The contrasted texture of Claus invites designers to explore the timeless beauty of deco hand-lettering translated in a contemporary context, promising a harmonious blend of sophistication and functionality. 

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mariachiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique is an evolution of the original design by Zetafonts for Lovelace, that challenges its romantic curves with the glitchty & fluid aestethic of transmodern neo-brutalist typography. The seductive "evil serif" look of the Pheimester-like Oldstyle letter shapes is made edgier by the quirky connections and unexpected calligraphic twirls that marry [...] Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mariachiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique is an evolution of the original design by Zetafonts for Lovelace, that challenges its romantic curves with the glitchty & fluid aestethic of transmodern neo-brutalist typography. The seductive "evil serif" look of the Pheimester-like Oldstyle letter shapes is made edgier by the quirky connections and unexpected calligraphic twirls that marry digital distortions to traditional penmanship. Sensuous but sharp, Erotique speaks the language of teasing, and unrequited love, over-the-top and restrained like a show of japanese Kinbaku, and beautifully heartbreaking like a friendzone valentine.  Designed for display use, this high-contrast serif typeface is ready to take center stage in projects where a subtle elegance and an edgy, aggressive touch are required. For branding use it is paired by a Erotique Ornaments, a set of interlocking patterns based on the font letter-shapes, allowing for striking packaging, digital and ambient design. For editorial use it can add a sharp sensuality to logos and titles thanks to an impressive array of alternate glyphs, subtle ligatures and a set of whiplike fleurons, collected in the Erotique Flourishes pack. The typeface has been developed in the regular, medium and bold weight plus a monoline version, all of which have been paired with an Alternate version to give immediate access the more exotic alternate letterforms.  With a character set of over five hundred glyphs, all the the weights of Erotique cover almost 200 languages using extended latin, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Swash and Case Sensitive Forms. If you are a typeface lover, be warned: Erotique could be your fatal attraction!

Designed by Mario De Libero, Quark typeface takes the principles of flat nib calligraphy and mixes them with bold typographic expermentation. It blends serif sophistication and digital aesthetics, with its unique identity stemming from the letters' peculiar inner space, that transforms along the weight axis. Mixing traditional translation details with a contemporary serif structure, Quark aims for timelessness through a fusion of forms, where tradition and modernity harmoniously coexist.

Sunshine Pro was designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Solenn Bordeau expanding the original Sunshine design by Francesco Canovaro, part of the Quarantype collection by Zetafonts, designed as a typeface for good vibes against Covid-19. [...] Sunshine Pro was designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Solenn Bordeau expanding the original Sunshine design by Francesco Canovaro, part of the Quarantype collection by Zetafonts, designed as a typeface for good vibes against Covid-19. Sunshine Pro is a experimental Clarendon-style font with contrast varies along the weight axis: contrast is reversed in light weight, minimized in the regular weight and spikes up in the bold and heavy weights. A variable version allows you to explore the full design space and select your preferred variant.  Like all the fonts from Quarantype, Sunshine Pro is completely free for personal and commercial use, thanks to the supporters of our instagram likefunding.

After Marcovaldo, here comes Visconte: a new singularity variant expanding the Calvino typeface family by Andrea Tartarelli with Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Francesco Canovaro as a branding font for the Desina Graphic Design Festival in 2023. It takes the design of the original Calvino typeface in the "brutal serif" territory, expanding spiky serifs and creating unexpected distortions and connections while keeping the original calligraphic old [...] After Marcovaldo, here comes Visconte: a new singularity variant expanding the Calvino typeface family by Andrea Tartarelli with Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Francesco Canovaro as a branding font for the Desina Graphic Design Festival in 2023. It takes the design of the original Calvino typeface in the "brutal serif" territory, expanding spiky serifs and creating unexpected distortions and connections while keeping the original calligraphic old style structure of the Calvino Family. The typeface takes its name from Italo Calvino's famous novel "Il Visconte Dimezzato" and uses the lowercase letter "i" as a way to evoke its surreal premise, with its titular character split in two by a cannon ball. The whole family expands on the contrast axis of Calvino, going beyond the "Grande" subfamily to look for a more extreme contrast, to be used mainly in display / poster size. Raw and unapologetic, this variant of Calvino has all the ruthless fascination of the italian middle ages, and it's thought for editorial headlines, posters and book covers, and other attention-grabbing designs. Visconte is perfect for pushing boundaries and creating a design that stands out from the crowd, so if you want to make a bold impact, Visconte is the font for you.