Our latest addition from Font Bureau is Proforma, a typeface by Petr van Blokland with an interesting background. Initially designed in 1983 for Purup, a Danish company specializing in forms (hence “pro forma”), it was one of the first typefaces developed specifically for low and medium resolution output. Proforma features classic oldstyle shapes and proportions, but swellings on stems are achieved by straight lines with distinct edges. These, as well as the simple, tapered serifs, are much easier to render than the smoothly modulated curves of traditional text faces. Today, this makes Proforma especially suited for screen typography and the web.
Proforma’s six weights are comparably close to each other, originally to enable compensation of different stroke weight on different papers, colors, or inverted text. This can be just as useful on the screen in order to take into account backlit surfaces and multiple resolutions. The roman styles are accompanied by pronounced true italics that give distinction in text sizes and reveal their interesting angularity in large sizes. If you want to combine Proforma with a sans serif, try Alright Sans, Amplitude or Salvo Sans. (Petr van Blokland designed Productus as a matching companion, available on Webtype in the near future.)
As with all fonts on Webtype, Proforma can be tested free of charge for 30 days. For more details, see the Proforma webfont page.
The family was met with great success and soon grew as several publishing houses commissioned more styles. In 2006, Jill Pichotta, Christian Schwartz, and Richard Lipton rounded it out into a systematic series of 27 styles and managed to retain Bureau Grot’s strong signature character over the wide range of five widths and six weights. With its narrow styles, Bureau Grot is an ideal headline face for compact columns and large display typography. The lighter weights of the normal and wide styles are suited for sizes down to 14 px. If you’re looking for a fitting serif companion, try combining Bureau Grot with 
While Nitti only makes an appearance in the light and medium weight in iA Writer, we are happy to offer the full, extensive family: five weights — light to black — with true italics and very broad language support. Nitti not only speaks all languages using the Latin alphabet but also Greek and Cyrillic. If you don’t need the full character set and want to minimize bandwidth, you can subset the fonts in your project settings.
Unlike many monospaced typefaces, Nitti doesn’t feel overly mechanical, but is approachable and contemporary. The quirky, idiosyncratic shapes of the early “grotesque” designs of the 19th century lend Nitti its humanity and warmth. Optimized for font-sizes down to 11 px, Nitti is well-suited for code samples or technical notes where a more casual atmosphere is desired, or as a reader-friendly alternative when setting longer passages of monospaced text. It combines well with other grotesque-inspired typefaces like 
Exciting news! We have added several new licensing tiers to our standard options to better accomodate customers and sites of all shapes and sizes. We now offer a license geared for small sites with up to 10,000 page views per month starting from $20 per year. This is a great option for personal projects or if you want to experiment with webfonts beyond our free, 30-day trial offer.
