The PTL Bugis typeface was conceived as a tribute to the city state of Singapore. Its concept was suggested by Singapore’s fascinating cultural mix of different Indian-Asian influences and the remnants of its English, colonial past. These diverse impressions led to the design of what the designer refers to as an ‘Indian Antiqua’ – ‘antiqua’ being the German term for a serifed book typeface. In the Indian quarter in Singapore, many hand-painted shop signs show the typical traits of the Indian devanagari script – notably, the strong emphasis on the midriff (equivalent to the x-height) and on horizontals in general. These features account for Bugis’s ‘Indian atmosphere’, an impression which is enhanced by the fact that some characters are equipped with serif-like protrusions directed towards the left, and by the short ascenders and descenders. In order to capture the English-colonial aspect of the city, Verena Gerlach looked into the serifed typefaces that were published towards 1900. In Bugis, the strong contrast between thick and thin stroke parts takes its exotic characters half-way back to Western Europe. For the sake of legibility, and in accordance with most Latin typefaces, the continuous horizontal line which is so typical of Indian scripts, and on which the letters seem be hung like laundry, was interrupted: it is visible only as a series of rudimentary horizontal shapes. The ‘pom-poms’ in ‘f’, ‘k’ and ‘r’ are happy-looking elements which can be found in both cultures. The name ‘Bugis’ refers to the world-famous Bugis Street (aka ‘Boogie Street’), a red-light district for sailors, exclusively operated by male prostitutes (‘Beaney Boys’, ‘Kai Tais’, ‘Ladyboys’). As this typeface, too, is an attractive yet ambiguous being, and was designed to symbolize the cultural and traditional eccentricities of Singapore, naming it after Bugis Street was a natural choice. PTL Bugis comes in four weights – Regular, Medium, Bold und Black – and has a choice of Lining Figures and Mediaeval Figures, both with Expert Sets.