What is the Sweet Square font?

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. More… Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “Standard” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

Sweet Square Font families

The Sweet Square includes the following font families:

• Sweet Square ExtraLight
• Sweet Square ExtraLight Small Caps
• Sweet Square ExtraLight Italic
• Sweet Square ExtraLight Italic Small Caps
• Sweet Square Light
• Sweet Square Light Small Caps
• Sweet Square Light Italic
• Sweet Square Light Italic Small Caps
• Sweet Square
• Sweet Square Small Caps
• Sweet Square Italic
• Sweet Square Italic Small Caps
• Sweet Square Medium
• Sweet Square Medium Small Caps
• Sweet Square Medium Italic
• Sweet Square Medium Italic Small Caps
• Sweet Square Bold
• Sweet Square Bold Small Caps
• Sweet Square Bold Italic
• Sweet Square Bold Italic Small Caps
• Sweet Square Heavy
• Sweet Square Heavy Small Caps
• Sweet Square Heavy Italic
• Sweet Square Heavy Italic Small Caps

Sweet Square Preview

Here is a preview of how Sweet Square will look. For more previews using your own text as an example, click here.