Dédale, designed by Thomas Bouville in 2020, is a hybrid type family inspired by inscriptions carved into the stone of the underground passages of the Paris Catacombs*.

Identified while exploring underground, the diversity of the inscriptions and their varying states of erasure inspired the designer’s unique approach. Rather than seeking to unearth the original drawings of the stone engravers (in an attempt to “rewind” the flow of time), Thomas Bouville sought to reveal links between the inscriptions and wanted, on the contrary, to give a sense of the passing of time.

The varying structure of the letters, common between styles, skillfully evokes the ossuary. It emphasizes an analogy between the letter and the human body, composed of both a skeleton and a physical envelope. The evolution of the three styles – from lineal to slab serif – shows the effect of time and the passage of life towards death.

The Light version – a slab serif made elegant by the contrast between its refined appearance and the prominent serifs – is designed for composing large sized titles with subtlety. The Regular – an incised typeface with pronounced extremities, is designed for reading long texts. The Bold version – a neo-grotesque sans serif that conserves certain details of the incised form – is useful for its strong lines. Each style has its own italic.

Dédale is also available as a variable font, allowing the design to move freely between the three styles, with the technology seeming to play with time.

*Dédale was originally created for the visual identity of the Paris Catacombs.

Minérale is a typeface designed with unusual stems, whose sides intersect. It was originally conceived as a geometrical exaggeration of the structure of traditional serif faces, where the central part of the vertical stems are thinned. Here this phenomenon is pushed to its limits: rather than a flared rectangle, the stem becomes two triangles connected at their tips, creating a clear, almost luminous zone around the central line of the letterforms.
Fairly sober in its thinnest versions, the typeface becomes more exuberant in its heavier weights: the contrast is tilted, resulting in a silhouette close to the old “Italian” typefaces, with horizontal stress.
The italics share a similar structure, but display a design of their own. Their curvy stems turn around a vertical line. Almost upright in the lighter weight (5°), the axis becomes extreme in the heaviest weight (21°).
The whole family is multiplexed: from ExtraLight to Black, in both uprights and italics, all weights share exactly the same widths and kerning tables. This way any variant can be substituted to another, without impacting textflow.

Minérale is also developed as a variable font.
Minérale Variable is the first typeface published by 205TF that explores the new potential of OpenType Font Variations. With this technology, you can choose the exact weight you need or want!
(Available with the complete family font).