It's always good to see the fruits of one's labours, and graphic designer Jack Tom from Bridgeport in Connecticut USA was kind enough to email a copy of his excellent cover design for Colby College magazine, using K-Type Rick Griffin. I'm sure Rick would approve.

The latest album by the phenomenally talented Bristol musician Ken Peel (aka Avon), employs the K-Type freebie Subway Ticker to create just the right urban feel for his CD, Marginal, which beautifully "blurs the boundaries between ambient electronica and jazz, evoking the rich narrative style of art-house cinema."

K-Type was invited to contribute, and the new CyberScript font makes its debut in the playfully distorted shape of CyberScript Shimmer which is included on the magazine's CD.

This font is demi-dingbat, part readable, part pictorial. It was compiled Pop Art fashion using images trawled from internet searches, entering various expressions relating to 'Security'. The aim was to reflect the theme intuitively and eclectically, without concern for restrictions of copyright or weighty documentation. Its appearance derives partly from children's spelling books or alphabet cards, and partly from its ancestors, the Mailart Typeface and Mailart Graphics font of 2004.

Apart from being stunned by the amazing colours of the original posters, I'd already begun to look closely at Victor Moscoso's letter forms and start work on a font inspired by the hugely exaggerated slab serifs on posters like his 'Horns of Plenty' featuring Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother & the Holding Company.

And so K-Type Bigfoot is born, Moscoso-inspired but with a completely new set of lower case letters that were pretty tricky to keep in character.

We are also tempted to work on a font inspired by Rick Griffin's lettering. His classic style is available as 'Hendrix', which appears to be a caps only font by designer David Nalle, available from Scriptorium. I'm tempted to work from the same sources, but again to create a lower case that sits right.

And as the warm sunlight drives off along the M56 and October creeps wetly from behind its sunglasses, I wish you peace, love, harmony and a big bag of Maltesers.

Two weights of highway lettering would often be used in the same street sign, a standard condensed version used for the main name and a half-size regular for less important information like 'road' or 'street'. Roadway is a Small Caps font. The upper case is condensed capitals, the lower case consists of regular weight small caps, sized at 50% and superscript.
The small, superscript comma and period are situated at keystrokes < and > respectively.
A hyphen to fit with the small caps is at the underscore position _

Lexia Readable is a copyright free font that is designed for maximum legibility. It's an attempt to capture the clarity and accessibility of Comic Sans without the American comic book associations and whimsical, childlike quality which are culturally inappropriate for many uses and may seem patronizing.

Lexia is an attempt to retain the strength, friendliness and legibility of Comic Sans, and even a slightly marker-drawn feel, whilst tidying up the comic book idiosyncrasies. It adds a hint of dignity, a sprinkling of refinement, and introduces elements of designer type to appeal to a contemporary audience. Whilst Comic Sans has long been a preferred choice for infant typography from 'Baby on Board' stickers onward, its use risks undermining any serious message and appearing condescending to readers with greater visual maturity, issues that are particularly acute when applied to adolescent and adult literacy.

When information about Lexia was put up on the Typophile Forums, Vincent Connare, suggested a better name might be 'Our Kid'. Or maybe 'Comic Sons', I suggested.

Typographical concerns from recent educational publications and discussions, and some highlighted by the British Dyslexia Association have been incorporated into the design of Lexia Readable - the simpler, handwritten forms of a and g, the non-symmetry of letters such as b and d, good sized descenders and ascenders, generous spacing and excellent screen clarity.

Dyslexia.com offer the font from their website, Abigail Marshall commenting,

"I am not utterly convinced that Lexia is superior to ComicSans (my personal favorite), which is also available to our users -- but I do have to note that as soon as I converted our site to the Lexia readable view, I immediately spotted a typographical error on the page that had previously eluded me.

Lexia has been accepted for inclusion in the site customization feature of the Dyslexia.com web site."

My curiosity was kindled when I experienced difficulty in finding an illustration of Solus in print or on the internet, and I discovered that the typeface had been withdrawn by Monotype in 1967.

I liked result and decided to research further, to seek out clearer source material and attempt the first digital version of Solus. I contacted Agfa Monotype by letter and email but got no reply.

I also made contact with some of the professionals suggested by Alessandro Segalini. Petra Cerne Oven asked Christopher Burke who felt that Solus was superseded by Joanna. James Mosley agreed, but still felt the resurrection of Solus to be an interesting project.

I started to compare Solus with Joanna and found it to be more similar to Perpetua in many respects. I also still felt it to have an identity of its own, for me it has a real English schooldays feel.

Justin Howes of the Type Museum, who sadly died early in 2005, noted, "I've always liked Solus, and it would be good to see it revived".

Mailartist and printer Alan Brignull sent me a high resolution copy of some Solus characters printed at 48 pt. and I set to work on making a version that was as close to Gill's original as I could create.

A big problem was the actual shape of the slab serifs. Even at 48 pt. the serifs appear to have slight curved bracketing. I acknowledge that this may well be an error - James Mosley wrote "My impression is that your bracketing, however sutble, is wrong, because Solus is conceived as essentially a mechanistic type -- a 'light Egyptian'."

Even so, I have decided to allow myself to be guided by my observations. Some Egyptians do possess curved brackets, moreover Solus has a warmth compared to Joanna that is augmented by the subtle bracketing visible on the printed copy.

In September, I contacted Robin Nicholas, Head of Typography at Agfa Monotype, and although he didn't invite me round for a coffee and a detailed look at Gill's original drawings, he did recommend Gill's 1926 sketchbook, 'A Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon', as showing the origin of Solus, and I immediately ordered a copy from Amazon.

He also noted, " I understand that there may be a legal problem using the name ‘Solus’."

Hence "Non Solus" is born. A typeface which is as near to the spirit of Eric Gill's Solus as I have been able to make.

Mandatory has been designed to conform to the required proportions –
Height –  790 units
Width – 500 units
Stroke – 140 units
Sidebearings – 2 x 55 units (Letter spaces – 110 units)
Word/Group Space – 330 units

Only the Upper Case letters and the numerals are used for registration plates, although the capital I, which is the same as the 1, is not used and the Q will no longer be used but may still be required for updating old plates.

For designers, the font is completed with small capitals for the lower case, currency symbols, punctuation marks, printers' symbols and accented characters.