William Berkson drew Williams Caslon to carry a perennial favorite into the twenty-first century. In eighteenth-century England and America, Caslon fonts came to dominate printing, and the twentieth-century hot-metal revivals were so legendary for readability that letterpress printers had a saying: “When in doubt, use Caslon.” Berkson’s digital version, released through Font Bureau in 2010, captures the warm, lively, dark, and open texture at the heart of the design. The advice still holds. Still rings true for: editorial text, essays, and any page that needs to feel trustworthy.

Miko McGinty digitized Caslons Egyptian from the earliest known general-purpose sans serif in the Latin alphabet: around 1816, William Caslon IV printed the phrase “W CASLON JNR LETTERFOUNDER” in plain, unadorned capitals. Matrices for 26 caps survived at the Stephenson Blake foundry, and Cyrus Highsmith and Christian Schwartz helped complete the Font Bureau revival, with Schwartz inventing the lowercase the original never had. Two centuries later, the sans serif is the default voice of screens everywhere, which is not bad for 26 capital letters. Still rings true for: signage, identities, and anywhere plain speaking wins.

David Jonathan Ross and Bethany Heck built Job Clarendon as an homage to job printing, the posters and flyers of the letterpress era, and to the condensed Clarendons that shouted from them. Their interpretation pushes the style thinner and heavier than most nineteenth-century examples dared to go, across 41 styles, while keeping its dense charm: chunky slab serifs, ample ball terminals, and square-terminal alternates. The original job printers sold shows and sales. Today’s designers sell everything else, and the voice still carries. Still rings true for: posters, promotions, and headlines that need to sell.

Bill Troop and Patrick Griffin started Semplicita Pro by reappraising Semplicità, Alessandro Butti’s seminal 1930 sans serif. Fueled by Futura, Butti traded its cool Teutonic geometry for warm, calligraphic forms rooted in the Italian Renaissance, and the design became a gene pool for new faces for decades. Canada Type’s version keeps that calligraphic soul while moving the most exaggerated features into alternates, making modernist letters readable at small sizes and persuasive in display. Modernism, with an Italian accent. Still rings true for: brand identities that want modern clarity with warmth.