'm very pleased if you'd like to try out these fonts, although they aren't necessarily finished or complete. There's lots more to do, both missing letters and fine-tuning of the spacing, and some might not work in every programme, I don't know why yet: but you might find something you can use already, as I have. They're free of course, with no restrictions on how you use them, but I would be glad to know if you use them, and in which programmes, and to see what they look like for you - send a screen shot or a PDF.

There's also a chart to show which letters there are in each font, you can let me know if you don't find any of the non-standard characters and don't have a tool that shows you.

• In Mac OS X you can open the character palette and set it to show everything in a particular font, and double-click there to insert things.
• InDesign for both Mac and Windows has its wonderful portmanteau Glyph palette.
• Under Windows you can use the 'Character Map' application: if it's installed it will mostly likely be found under Start Menu/Programs/Accessories/System Tools, otherwise it can be installed from the original disks.

  Mac OS X	InDesign	Windows XP & 2000
  click for a closer view

There are 25 fonts here, in the one package: you can click to see the full character set for a particular font, though they're all included in the download package too. Where no designer's name is given, the original is from a historic source, otherwise the name in the title or after it shows whose design the font is made from, each designer has their own page here. The first eight are now released at MyFonts.com where they gain from a very sophisticated presentation and you can try out your own test phrases at various sizes; part of the deal with them is that we don't sell those fonts cheaper elsewhere, so they're not included in the free download package here any more.

These eight fonts are now at MyFonts:
Ashbourne 1241: from a Derbyshire gravestone
Chiswick Illuminated Caps: five styles giving many possiblities
David's Roundhand: with two different sets of capitals - Lombardic and Round
Rick's Relaxed Italic (Richard) - three weights - Italic, Medium Italic, Bold Italic
Sevillia suite (Richard): dancing text - formal text informal tiles - formal tiles
Alice ScrollTip (Richard)
Karin's Lombardy Caps - two versions, finer and bolder fills within the same outlines
Soest St. Mary

These 25 fonts are included in the free download package
all the Latin capitals and small letters and a few other bits and pieces
Davie's Roundhand - Lombardic Capitals only: a later version with Round Capitals as well, above
DeBeauChesne Roman
Rick's Classic Italic (Richard)
Rick's Folklore Roman (Richard)
Rick's Relaxed Italic (Richard) - a later more developed version with three weights - above
all the capitals
Bickham SwashCaps (a quick sketch for those who can't afford Adobe's version with three weights at $35 each)
Chiswick Black Caps (there's a later, more developed version above)
Davie's Sapphire
Davie's Romantique
Lettre ornée
King Richard II Caps
Rick's Decorated Uncials (Richard)
NesbittDecoCaps
Shaw Decorated Initials 1
Shaw Decorated Initials 4
Taliente Illucaps
Westminster Memorial Brasses
incomplete set of characters which might be of some use to somebody some time: if someone asks for the rest I'll do them
Anders Fancy capitals - 12 letters
Anders plain capitals - 17 letters, 3 ornaments
Cartouches after Lodovico Vicentino - 4 shapes
Celtic Noad - 21 letters
Dagmar's IlluCaps - only one letter so far, but it's a beautiful one! - a classic capital 'A' with a separate background at 'a'
Davie illuminated capitals - only two letters, but they're fascinating!
Kurbits - two roses and one poppy with leaves, but I'm raring to go and do a lot more!
Samuel - 22 letters and a couple of curlie-whurlies

Download David's fonts 2007; last updated 23rd February 2007

The whole Fontografia story is here