Alcalá is based on the “Biblia poliglota complutense” (Polyglot Bible of Alcalá). It was the first edition of a complete polyglot Bible, as well as the first printed version of the New Testament in Greek (Septuagint) with gloss. Conceived between 1502 and 1517, it was produced under the patronage of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.
The first drawings of Alcalá go back to 1995. A second version started in 2011, commissioned by a publisher for a French
and Malagasy edition of the Bible by J.N. Darby. Alcalá was developped in three styles: roman, italic and bold. Today, a new cut is added: Alcalá Black Display, its intended to compose titles and headings.
Alcalá has all requested qualities for editorial design, especally newspaper and magazine layouts. Its sharp design guarantes high readability, space saving and smart printed rendering in small sizes, as well as a great look in bigger uses. Look at its alternative punctuation! For book design, Alcalá Roman contains titling capitals and its Italic contains a serie of special ligatures.
While other characters has extended families, Damien Gautier decided to develop a reduced one. Alcalá has the only the cuts you need!

As every 205TF typefaces, Alcalá has an extented Latin glyphset which allows to compose many languages.

Helvetius is a reinterpretation by Matthieu Cortat of a font used in a 1778 edition of De l’homme (On Man) by french enlightenment philosopher Claude-Adrien Helvetius. The title page of this book states that it has been printed in london. As for many of its kind, it’s probably a fake adress, often used by French publishers of that time to get rid of censorship. The type itself is clearly influenced by the style of Fournier Le Jeune.
Its italic, though, is definitely playful, Those features are kept in the classical yet sensitive digital revival. Slightly condensed, with a large x-height and two extra weights, it fits perfectly any jobing work in search of accuracy, classicism, but personnality and warmth as well.
A typographical “petite robe noire” which makes parisian women classy even for everiday life.