CastleType was commissioned in 1991 by San Francisco Focus magazine to digitize three members of the Standard family, a Continental lineale that was popular in Switzerland in the 1950s and later in the United States. A cousin to the ubiquitous Helvetica and very similar to Akzidenz-Grotesk, Standard is an alternative that is considerably warmer and a bit more idiosyncratic.

Some of the original Standard fonts, particularly Standard Regular, appear to have been hastily designed; these have been greatly improved in the CastleType versions with more harmonious proportions and other refinements. CastleType has expanded the Standard CT family to make it a complete typographic solution with four widths (normal, condensed, semi-extended and extended) of nine weights each (Hairline through Extra Bold).

The entire Standard CT family supports most European languages including those that use the Cyrillic alphabet, OpenType features, arbitrary fractions, and a collection of geometrics, dingbats & fleurons.