Fantastic ML is an exuberant Art Nouveau font. It was originally released as “Modern Style” by Fonderie G. Peignot & Fils, Paris, France sometime before 1903. Since “Le style moderne” was the generic French name for Art Nouveau, it is possible that someone decided a less generic name was needed. The typeface became known as Fantastic. Compared to conventional text letters, it is just that. Fantastic has a whimsical, architectural feel. The typeface reminds me of a cross between Hoffmann’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. The letterforms themselves are similar to those by Ludwig von Zumbusch on the cover of “Jugend” in March, 1896, but with the addition of serifs.

Fantastic ML is a decorative, all-cap font intended for display use and functions best at 18 points or larger. There are a total of 306 glyphs. In addition to the standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page with character slots up to decimal position 255, there are glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. However, some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (1252). The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS format and a TTF version which is in Open TT format. Use whichever works best for your applications.