Figgins Brute Font Download

"A capital titling face with numerals, erroneously labelled in Figgins specimen book of 1817 as an ‘antique’ or roman. With a very bold, nearly monoline construction and squared serifs as thick as the main stroke, this type surpassed even the fat face style in blackness, it was popularised by the advent of handbills and early advertising posters, which needed bold type styles to project commercial messages from a distance.

A sign-writer friend of mine theorises that the Egyptian style originated with the North African campaigns (hence Egyptian) of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the type historian Ruari McLean also suggests that the Egyptian style originated with signwriters ‘block’ letters, just like the prototypical (and contemporary) sans serif of Caslon IV." (Ben Archer)

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Figgins Sans Font Download

The first sans serif types were made in London in the early 19th century. They were severely modern, all caps and bold.

The Figgins foundry, inventor of the term sans serif, showed a fine example in its specimen of 1836.

The extra bold weight of Figgins Sans is a close revival of the original, with the addition of a lower case which retains its partly geometric, partly grotesque quality. The family is rounded out with other weights and an italic, and extended into Cyrillic and Greek, all executed in what is assumed to be as authentic a manner as possible, given the hypothetical nature of the exercise.

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Together with Scotch Modern, comprises The Modern Suite of matched fonts.

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