Liesel is a six-font-family, hand-lettered and designed for layering. When scanned textures and color washes are applied in digital applications, and the fonts are stacked over one another in various blending modes, the family is transformed from font to authentic-looking water colored or screenprinted lettering.

Rich Opentype features include decorative contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, swashes, true fractions, and old style numerals. All characters have been encoded with PUA id tags so all can be accessed in non-Opentype applications. Multi-language support is also included in each font.

At long last! Realistic, digital water colored and printed type!

I first imagined Liesel as a traditional typeface, with a look that would be appropriate for historical document reproduction. After researching penmanship styles common in the 18th and 19th centuries, Liesel Regular was born! As I neared completion of the font, it occurred to me that her antique characters translated surprisingly well into modern design. I began to trace and print the letter forms with various tools, from feather nibs to oil pastels, and eventually settled on three: a simple round brush, a charcoal pencil, and a distressed letterpress print scan. By layering painted color wash scans over the letters & adjusting these scans’ blending modes, each letter took on an analog look. When these “artified” fonts were then layered over one another, the result was a font family that could appear hundreds of years old or freshly painted!

To help designers experiment with the Liesel family, I created a paper texture background & two high resolution, royalty-free watercolor washes that Licensees can layer & use in their projects, along with a tutorial.