TT Marxiana useful links:

Specimen | History of creation | Graphic presentation | Customization options

Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org

About TT Marxiana: TT Marxiana is a project to reconstruct a set of pre-revolutionary fonts that were used in the layout of the "Niva" magazine, published by the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx. In our project, we decided to focus on a specific set of fonts that were used in the preparation and printing of the "Niva" magazine in 1887, namely its Antiqua and Italic, Grotesque and Elzevir.

As part of the TT Marxiana project, we sought to adhere to strict historicity and maintain maximum proximity to the paper source. We tried to avoid any “modernization” of fonts, unless of course we consider this to be kerning work, the introduction of OpenType features and creation of manual hinting. As a result, with the TT Marxiana font family, a modern designer gets a full-fledged and functional set of different fonts, which allows using modern methods and using modern software to create, for example, a magazine in a design typical of the late 19th century.

The TT Marxiana project started in the late summer of 2018 and from the very beginning went beyond the traditional projects of TypeType because of the importance of preserving the historical identity. Since up to this point, we had never before reconstructed the font from historical paper sources and with such a level of elaboration and attention to detail, it took us two years to implement this project. You can read more about all stages of the project in our blog, and here we will briefly talk about the result.

As it turned out, drawing a font following the scanned pages of a century-old magazine is a very difficult task. In fact, such a font reconstruction very much resembles archaeological excavations or solving a complex cipher, and all these efforts are needed only in order to finally understand what steps need to be taken so that the resulting font is not just an antiqua, but the specific and accurate antiqua from "Niva" magazine.

In addition, due to the specifics of printing, same characters in the old magazine setting looked completely different, which greatly complicated the task. In one place, there was less ink than needed, and the letter in the reference was not well-printed and thin, in some other place there was more ink and the letter had flooded. An important task was to preserve and convey this feeling of typographic printing, but at the same time it was important to identify the common logic and character of the dot gains so that the font would form a harmonious, single, but at the same time lively picture.

Since the "Niva" magazine was historically published in Russian, the magazine had no shortage of references for the reconstruction of Cyrillic characters, but there were not many Latin letters in the magazine at all. In addition, the paper source lacked a part of punctuation, diacritics, there were no currency signs nor ligatures at all—we developed all these characters based on font catalogs of the 19–20 centuries, trying to reflect characteristic details from the main character composition to the max. So, for example, the Germandbls character, which is not in the original "Niva" set, we first found in one of the font catalogs, but still significantly redesigned it.

We decided that in such a voluminous project, only graphic similarities with the original source are not enough and we came up with a feature that can be used to exchange modern Russian spelling for pre-revolutionary spelling. When this feature is turned on, yat and yer appear in the necessary places (i, ѣ, b, ѳ and ѵ), the endings of the words change, and so appears a complete sensation of the historical text. This feature works in all fonts of the TT Marxiana font family.

TT Marxiana Antiqua is a scotch style serif, the drawing of which carefully preserved some of the artifacts obtained by printing, namely dot gain, a slight deformation of the letters and other visual nuances. TT Marxiana Antiqua has an interesting stylistic set that imitates the old setting and in which some of the signs are made with deliberate sticking or roughness. Using this set will provide an opportunity to further simulate the setting of that great time.

TT Marxiana Grotesque is a rather thick and bold old grotesk. Its drawing also maximally preserved the defects obtained during printing and characteristic of its paper reference. In addition to pre-revolutionary spelling, TT Marxiana Grotesque has a decorative set with an inversion. This is a set of uppercase characters, numbers and punctuation, which allows you to type inverse headers, i.e. print white on black. As a result of using this set, you get the text against black bars—this way of displaying was very characteristic for print advertising at the turn of the century. In addition, about 30 decorative indicator stubs were drawn for this set: arrows, hands, clubs, etc.

TT Marxiana Elzevir is a title or header font and is a compilation of monastic Elzevir that were actively used in the "Niva" magazine for all its prints. Unlike the antiqua, TT Marxiana Elzevir has sharper forms, and the influence of deformations from typographic printing is not as noticeable in the forms of its signs. This is primarily due to the specifics of its drawing and the fact that it was usually used as a heading font and was printed in large sizes. The height of the lowercase and uppercase characters of Elsevier is the same as the heights of the antiqua, but the font is more contrasting and lighter, it has a lot of white and, unlike the antiqua and the grotesque, there are a lot of sharp corners. An exclusive feature of the TT Marxiana Elzevir is an alternative set of uppercase characters with swash.

• TT Marxiana Antiqua consist of 625 glyphs each and and it has 23 OpenType features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, case.

• TT Marxiana Antiqua Italic consist of 586 glyphs each and and it has 22 OpenType features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, case.

• TT Marxiana Grotesque consists of 708 glyphs and it has 22 OT features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, case.

• TT Marxiana Elzevir consists of 780 glyphs and it has 21 OT features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, ordn, frac, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, calt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, salt, c2sc, smcp, case, liga.

FOLLOW US:

Instagram | Facebook | Website

TT Marxiana language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Ladin, Leonese, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Manx, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tagalog, Taita, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tsonga, Tswana, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Valencian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Xhosa, Zulu.

The appearance of prompts such as "The purchasing party's product has been delisted", "There is currently no price", and "Updating price" on the purchasing agent's product page is due to a remote server reading failure. Please contact online customer service or WeChat customer service at 18610955775 for a detailed quotation

Desktop License (Desktop)

"Desktop" refers to the computer, the desktop license allows you to install the fonts on your computer for offline design purposes, including the design of logos, posters, merchandise, magazines, etc. For example, the static images you design with fonts on your computer are allowed to be distributed at will (regardless of online or offline use); however, you cannot embed the fonts in any form. However, the font file cannot be embedded in your work in any form, that is to say, the font file cannot leave your computer, for example, it is not allowed to convert the font format and embed it in web pages or embed it in PPT and then distribute it; it should be noted that some copyright holders may additionally stipulate that the font is not allowed to be used for the design of LOGO and other specified purposes.

The license is usually licensed according to the number of users, the number of users refers to the number of computers that may have the font installed; the desktop license is generally valid for life, if there is a specified number of years our purchase page will be prompted; the works designed within the validity of the license can be used for life, but if you need to continue to use the font for design outside the validity of the license, you need to purchase a new license.

Webfont

As the name implies, webfont license is a kind of license that allows font files to be embedded into various web pages. Regardless of whether the font files are converted or not, and regardless of whether the font files are fully embedded or partially embedded, the license is required for any form of font files embedded into web pages.

Different copyright holders have different ways of selling web page licenses. In addition to the license period, they usually specify the total number of views or monthly views within the license period, you can choose to purchase according to your website needs.

Application License (App)

App license allows you to embed the font file into the APP you develop or operate, no matter it is game APP, education APP, music APP, any APP that embeds the font file needs to obtain the license.

Application license can be sold in various forms according to the license period, installed volume, APP quantity, etc.

E-book License (ePub)

The ePub license allows font files to be embedded in an electronic publication, but the font software cannot be installed in the operating system running the electronic publication.

This license can be sold in various forms such as license period, number of titles, total number of devices, and number of views.

Server License (Server)

The Server license allows you to install fonts on the licensed server in a way that they cannot be extracted, but not on any other computer or processing unit.

This license can be sold in various forms according to the license term, number of CPU cores, number of clients, etc.

Digital Ads License (Digital Ads)

The Digital Ads license allows you to access, download, and use the Web fonts provided in the Web Font Kit to create digital ads, but only for the purpose of publishing digital ads on the output device.

The license can be sold in a variety of formats based on license duration, number of releases, number of exposures, etc.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

After you complete the payment, the service provider will procure the relevant authorization for you in the first time, and the authorization process will usually be completed within 24 hours. After the procurement is completed, you can view the authorization voucher in the order details and download the font file or apply for invoicing.

Usually the "licensee" of font software license should be the end-user of the design solution, so the owner of the design solution must obtain the relevant authorization of the font used, and some authorization methods (such as desktop license) specify the number of terminals to be used, so all computers using the font for design or modification of the solution need to obtain authorization.

You can select or add "Licensee" information when you submit your order, and fill in your customer information in the "Licensee" form.

Windows system: Copy the font file directly to C:/Windows/Fonts, or right-click the font file and select "Install"; Mac system: Double-click the font file - click Install, or open "Applications "-"Font Book", drag the fonts into it.

Due to the operating system or software version, if you can't find the installed font in the software, we suggest you restart the system first, the font may be shown in the list as Chinese or English name, please look for it carefully, as long as the font is installed successfully, the font must exist in the font list.

When using WeChat, Alipay and other third-party payment tools to make large payment, risk prompts may be triggered. Please operate according to the following methods. You can also pay large orders through corporate transfer<