205 Corp.
24, rue Commandant-Faurax
69006 Lyon
France
T. 33 (0)4 37 47 85 69
M. contact@205.tf
Newsletter
205 Corp.
24, rue Commandant-Faurax
69006 Lyon
France
T. 33 (0)4 37 47 85 69
M. contact@205.tf
Newsletter
Justus Erich Walbaum (1768-1837), a confectioner by trade, carved his own cake molds. Quite gifted, he became a specialist, developing an activity as a punch-cutter, and eventually bought Ernst Wilhelm Kirschner’s type foundry. Considered to be one of the foremost creators of his time, he engraved gothic letters and Antiqua type, similar to those of Didot and Bodoni. But his romans had a different flavor, and for some, they contain the origins of the Grotesques that followed.
In 2010, Thomas Huot-Marchand and SPMillot were asked to develop the typographic identity of the Musée d’Orsay that had been based on Berthold Walbaum since its very beginnings. They proposed adding distant “cousins” in later typographic styles: a bold grotesque and a thin slab serif, but these typefaces would ultimately remain unused.
In 2020, Thomas Huot-Marchand decided to redesign them while developing an extended family. Album is a subtraction of Walbaum: with no serifs for Album Sans and with no contrast for Album Slab. Its silhouette retains some memory of the particular proportions and slightly flattened curves of Walbaum.
Album Slab has almost no contrast. The thicknesses of the stems correspond to the three lightest weights of the Sans version. The ball terminals, accentuated in the thinnest versions, recall typewritten letters, but with proportional tracking. An informal rereading of Walbaum, Album Slab can be perfectly combined with Sans and its italics.
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.
The Andersen typeface was born out of the lack of typefaces adapted to children’s stories and the fact that they are often written to be read aloud. The major innovation was the creation of a complementary punctuation system. Indeed, in addition to classic glyphs, Andersen has 11 totally new punctuation marks that can be used to express feelings. As with Spanish punctuation, these glyphs are placed at the beginning and end of a sentence to help the reader to find the right tone. Also, the forms of the letters have been designed in such a way as to make it easier for dyslexic children to read them, by working on the distinction between similar forms such as b, d, p, q, 9, and 6 . Its design comes from the synthesis of the Humanes model and contemporary elements for the purposes of bringing a softness to the letterforms. The contrast is mostly low so that the typeface works just as well in titles, text, and captions. Andersen's versatility makes it possible to use it for both children’s literature and other media such as posters, as well as publishing in general.
Sarah Kremer’s Bartok redefines the very notion of a type family. Its four styles with their singular designs break with the principle of formal unity usually sought after in such families. Each variant stands out for its expressivity, contributing to the creation of a contrasted whole.
The development of Bartok was undertaken in the context of editorial design in order to propose a multifaceted typeface with only four styles. It has been designed to be used for long or short passages of straight text as well as for titles.
With the aim of proposing complementary typographic colors, the four styles of Bartok (Regular, Italic, Highlight and Poster) have been designed with different structures and possess distinct weights. Each variant develops formal specificities taken from different moments in the history of typography.
Inspired by Humanist typefaces, Bartok Regular is based on the proportions of typefaces derived from incunabula. Its asymmetrical serifs and slanted stems are characteristic of calligraphic script. Its squat counterforms combined with its stability give compositions both pace and balance.
Bartok Italic explores the calligraphic model of the chancery hand, to offer strong cursivity combined with a supple design, changes in direction and pronounced lines and angles.
The archetype of the early grotesques is visible in the Bartok Highlight: an assumed density, varying contrasts and non-orthogonal terminals.
The details of Bartok Poster, with its irregularities of alignment and varying angles, can be fully appreciated in large sizes. Its heavy weight, changing contrasts and roundness infuse it with a certain bonhomie.
Though these formal differences are quite pronounced, certain curves and details are echoed from one style to another. The general proportions of the typefaces (x-heights and cap heights) have been harmonized so that they can be combined easily and naturally.
This character is composed only of points whose diameter creates an optical effect It is developed in three weights: light, regular and bold. Contrary to what we might think, the Beretta is not a modular character. The points are placed in an optical fashion so as to optimise the regularity and legibility of each sign.
As if to affirm its originality, this character is developed in two styles: sans serif and serif. This character, a priori used for titles, reveals itself to function particularly well when it is used in small bodies.
With the efficient and precious help of Roxane Gataud and Corentin Moyer.
Cardone, developed between 2016 and 2021 is a singular interpretation of early so-called Scottish modern faces, later called Scotch Roman. Specifically created for editorial design, this serif typeface seeks an ideal balance between elegance and robustness: its ample curves contrast with the brutality of its lines and the verticality of its axis.
The five weights of Cardone ranging from Thin to Bold each with its own italic have been designed separately so as to emphasize the uniqueness of their design. Without sacrificing the elegance of Scottish modern faces, each style is pushed to the point of extreme simplicity and efficiency, both in their structure and in every formal detail.
Functional and legible, the typeface has been designed mainly for use with running text. Nevertheless the constant thickness of Thin or, inversely, the stark contrast of Bold allows Cardone to stand out when used in titles.
To extend its efficiency to multiple uses, the Cardone type family is also available in a Micro version (Regular and Italic) intended for settings in smaller than eight points. The design displays forms that are radical, mechanical and straightforward.
For more unconventional applications, Cardone Micro has also been designed to be spectacular when used in large sizes.
The Clifton is a reinterpretation of the Athenian typeface that was distributed around 1896 by the British Type Foundry. It is also close to the Fantail typeface proposed by the American Type Founders. This typeface, with its inverted contrast compensates for the finesse of its stems through its imposing serifs that draw a black dot in the letter, thus providing a particular sparkle to a composition. Less contrasted than the drawing of reference and with its very important x-height, the Clifton has been designed as a body text typeface.
The italic is not a simple slanting of the roman but has its own design, very slender and mobile. It has nonetheless been designed as a duo, marking the difference and allowing for a strong contrast with the roman within a text.
Its style, located somewhere between Italians and Westerns, gives this typeface the American flavour of the latter but with a rawer touch, as if it had come straight from the Bayou. As a tip of the hat to this reference, its name pays tribute to musician Clifton Chenier, father of Zydeco, the style of black music from French Louisiana of the nineteen thirties.
The CX80 typeface is a “machine”* as rudimentary as it is atypical. Four kinds of serifs are combined in the same font: sans serifs, triangular serifs, sharp rectangular serifs, and smooth rectangular serifs. Each letter can exhaust all possible combinations: up to 256 variations for any one sign!
The user is free to play with the possibilities provided by the typeface. Either they choose to be an iconoclast by associating different serifs (simply using their keyboard), or they may prefer one of the four basic styles that correspond to each of the serifs.
Behind this intentionally economic design, CX80 reveals a unique potential; particularly as weight can be adjusted at will using variable font technology.
CX80 reveals its formal and conceptual sources of inspiration through its modular and composite appearance. The name openly refers to the Codex 80 type classification imagined by Jean Alessandrini** in 1980. Seeking an alternative to traditional classifications, he proposed a new taxonomy adapted to the typographic renewal of the time.
A second influence is the modding of scooters. During the 1980s (when Damien Gautier was old enough to buy his first Piaggio Ciao), teenagers were in the habit of customizing their mopeds by adding functional and decorative elements. This culture of outrageous tinkering and modding also runs through the typeface.
With CX80, Damien Gautier continues his exploration of vernacular typographical forms produced by amateurs and industrial designers. Forms that he loves for their freshness and ingenuity, that here once again show their surprising potential.
* CX80 echoes other typefaces by Damien Gautier: LeChaufferie, Robin, and Heliuum.
** Jean Alessandrini (1942), French typographer, illustrator, and writer.
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.
Exposure borrows the eponymous principle from photography, using it to question the possibilities offered by variable fonts in a completely original way. While studying at the Atelier national de recherche typographique (Nancy, France), Federico Parra Barrios took a very unique approach to the technique, developing a singular typeface between 2019 and 2022.
Available in Roman and Italic, Exposure is a remarkable feat — both technically and in terms of drawing — that shows how other ways of exploiting variable font technology are possible.
While variable fonts — which appeared in 2016 — are considered to be a major development in typography, the use of axes of variation to modify weight, set-width, and optical size are all transformations inherited from previous techniques. Federico Parra Barrios breaks away from this conventional approach to propose a new way of thinking.
Exposure’s axis of variation ranges from –100 to +100, and gives a feeling of adjusting the intensity of the light to which the typeface is exposed, thus affecting its outline. Some might see this as a nod to another, now defunct, technique: phototypesetting.
At zero, the typeface is sharp and crisp. As the index decreases, the font becomes increasingly underexposed. The typeface seems to deform and becomes overwhelmingly black. The counterforms are filled almost to the point of illegibility.
Conversely, as the index increases, so does the light intensity. The original line is somehow overexposed until parts of it vanish as if burned by the light.
Federico Parra Barrios has carefully sculpted many intermediate designs in-between these extremes. In its static version, Exposure is also available in 21 different intensities of light. With the variable version, the user is free to select the index according to their needs and, of course, dynamically exploit the technology to create animations.
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.
With the Henry typeface, Matthieu Cortat provides a personal interpretation of the Deberny & Peignot foundry's Garamond, engraved by Henri Parmentier between 1914 and 1926 under the direction of Georges Peignot.
Its authors sought to recover the grace of the typefaces of Claude Garamont, while at the same time taking into account the reality of the modern paper industry, that uses wood based papers and not cloth based ones, as was the case in the 16th century. Henry is based on medium type sizes (9 to 14) of Parmentier's engraving. It is a quite slim Garalde, a little narrow, lean and slender. We feel an inspiration that is almost “Art Nouveau” in its z that leans towards the left, its winding a and J, the lower loop of its heavily curved t, the ample loop of its Q… These features are still visible in the italic with its changing rhythm and it s joyous ligatures.
Henry is a delicate typeface. Its design precise if not a little dated.
Immortel, designed by Clément Le Tulle-Neyret, is a type family with four variants developed according to the Hippocratic theory of humors that explains these latter through the presence of one of the four principal fluids. Each one is the cause behind the development of a character trait: phlegm represents a lymphatic, sluggish, slow character (Immortel Infra); yellow bile, an angry and prideful character (Immortel Colera); blood, a jovial and warm character (Immortel Vena); and black bile provokes hopelessness and melancholy (Immortel Acedia).
This type family is envisaged like a human being, able to reveal different temperaments through the forms that it adopts. Each variant can be substituted for another without causing any change in the bulkiness of the text, as the metric system, which provides a structural link between the variants—set width, x-heights, the length of ascenders and descenders, height of capitals—is constant.
Typographically, each variant is inspired by the work of type designers, following the course of history:
— Immortel Infra finds its source in the work of Robert Granjon, a typeface engraver from the 16th century;
— Immortel Colera in the work of Jean Jannon, an engraver from the 17th century;
— Immortel Vena is influenced by the work of Jacques-François Rosart, an engraver from the 18th century;
— Immortel Acedia takes its inspiration from the engraving Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer (1514) and attempts a synthesis between two traces of a priori opposing tools, one made by the flat tip and the other by the narrow point. In this sense it is closer to a 21st century typeface.
Immortel Infra and Vena, variants intended to be used with running text, possess two italics: the first, called “Median”, slightly slanted, is ideal for composing long text; the second, called “Italic”, with its very sharp angle and ornate instrokes and terminals, is ideal for emphasis.
To best serve running text, the Infra and Vena variants possess two grades: this signifies that these two variants have two slightly different weights that conserve the same set width so as to have a more or less dark text color according to the page layout and/or the sensitivity of the user. Grade 2 can also be used to compose knocked out text on a dark background.
This type family began life in October 2016 in the Atelier national de recherche typographique (ANRT, Nancy – France). It development was pursued thanks to the support of the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) in 2018.
Injurial was designed during the editorial design of a novel by Boll, published by Tripode, in 2014. This humorous thriller features many mediums, and specifically some pretty aggressive graffiti. Sandrine Nugue chose to design a sharp, elegant typeface to be used for insults.
The result is Injurial, a typeface made to withstand the worst, while saying it with refinement and eloquence. Its proportions are those of monumental Roman capitals, and it possesses a light weight which reveals only a very slight contrast. Categorized as an incise, or glyphic serif, consisting solely of capitals, it is ideal for setting titles.
The Kelvin typeface is the culmination of a sensitive thinking around a modern aesthetic in typography. It is expressed through two stylistic axes — with and without serifs — with both being based on two historical ideas of modernity. Even though their designs are not based on the same skeleton, Kelvin Avec and Kelvin Sans are tied together by a common philosophy, that of building as opposed to plotting or drawing. Each one is accompanied by an italic and a titling version in which their inherent characteristics find themselves exacerbated.
Kelvin Avec takes its inspiration from typefaces which appeared at the beginning of the 18th century, attached to the family of traditional serifs. Its main reference is the Romain du Roi whose creative process is divided into two stages: a conceptual study which is then followed by an adaptation of the designs during the engraving of different sizes.
The Kelvin Sans pays tribute to the typefaces which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and that we connect to the family of geometrical sans serifs. The observation of typefaces created by Jakob Erbar, Rudolf Koch, Edward Johnston and Paul Renner along with typefaces from promotional advertising documents from the epoch, came to nourish the design process of the Kelvin Sans.
In 1846, Lyonnais printer, Louis Perrin commissioned founder Francisque Rey to engrave a series of capitals inspired by monumental roman inscriptions. They would go on to be used in the composition of work on the Antique inscriptions of Lyon, by Alphonse de Boissieu. In 1855, the typeface was completed by a number of lowercase fonts; certain bodies came from the stocks of Rey, others were drawn by Perrin himself. His “Augustaux”, one of the first “revivals” in the history of typography, became rapidly successful, launching the “Renouveau Elzévirien” (Old-style Renewal) movement. With Louize, Matthieu Cortat provides a contemporary reinterpretation of the Augustaux. It retains a wise and serene tone, the grey of clear text, the soft roundness of the curves. Louize is discreet, calm, harmonious.
Available in three weights, Louize has a number of small capitals (for the roman styles) and ornamental capitals (for the italics).
For use in titles, Louize is available in a Display version. This sharp and clear variant is inspired by letters engraved in stone. It brings a new contemporary freshness to this timeless typeface. The Display variants also offer, in the roman styles, a series of ligatures inspired by that of concise engravings.
After the success of Louize and Louize Display, Matthieu Cortat completes the elegant Louize Family with Louize Display Condensed available in three weights: Regular, Medium and Bold.
In 1846, Lyonnese printer, Louis Perrin commissioned founder Francisque Rey to cut a series of capitals inspired by monumental roman inscriptions. They have been used to compose “Les Inscriptions antiques de Lyon”, a book by Alphonse de Boissieu. In 1855, the typeface was completed by series of lowercase, some coming from the printshop of Rey, others designed by Perrin himself. His “Augustaux”, one of the first “revivals” in the history of typography, became rapidly successful, launching the “Renouveau Elzévirien” movement.
With Louize Family, Matthieu Cortat provides a contemporary reinterpretation of the Augustaux. It retains a wise and serene tone, a clear grey of text, the soft roundness of the curves. Louize is discreet, calm, harmonious.
For use in titles, Louize is available in a Display version. This sharp and clear variant is inspired by letters carved in stone. It brings a new contemporary freshness to this timeless typeface. The Display variants also offer, in the roman styles, a series of ligatures inspired by stone cutters traditions. Those features also appear in the condensed cuts.
Minuscule is a typeface designed for very small sizes. Its creation was inspired by the theories of ophthalmologist Emile Javal and his “theory of compact prints” (Physiologie de la lecture et de l’écriture / Physiology of reading and writing, Paris, Alcan, 1905). Thomas Huot-Marchand initiated this project at the Atelier national de recherche typographique in 2001-2002, and completed it, designing the italics in 2006–2007 during a residency in the Académie de France in Rome – Villa Médicis.
The font comes in five versions, all optimised for 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 points. The design evolves progressively as "the size decreases": the spacing and the "x-height" increase, the contrast decreases, "inktraps appear" and the design is simplified. The MinUscule 2 is the strangest: “at this size, said Javal, we pay more particular attention to the difference between the letters”. As a consequence, the particularities of each sign are exaggerated, and the secondary details eliminated.
The contrast of the italics is not found in the spacing, almost identical to the roman, but by a more rhythmic design, progressively more lively and broken.
The Minuscule has received a number of awards: from the Type Collectors Club in New York in 2005 (Certificate of excellence in type design); Erik Spiekermann declared it to be the Favourite Font of 2007 in Typographica (http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/minuscule/ ), and Paul Shaw described it as one of the typefaces of the decade in Print magazine (http://www.printmag.com/imprint/ten-typefaces-of-the-decade/ ). In 2016, a group of more than 256 original drawings of the Minuscule were acquired by the Centre national des arts plastiques.
“A historically inspired face that is stranger than either ITC Bodoni or ITC Founder’s Caslon is Minuscule (2005), a typeface designed by Thomas Huot-Marchand to test the ‘theory of compact printings’ pronounced by Louis-Emile Javal, a nineteenth-century French ophthalmologist. The font comes in five versions, all optimised for small sizes: Minuscule Six (6 pt), Minuscule Cinq (5 pt), Minuscule Quatre (4 pt), Minuscule Trois (3 pt), and – a true micro-font – Minuscule Deux (2 pt). This last item is as bizarre as anything created during the heyday of grunge type back in the 1990’s.”
Paul Shaw, Scale and spirit (size-specific fonts) in Eye 71 Vol.18, spring 2009
With the efficient and precious help of Roxane Gataud.
For the Petit Serif typeface, Matthieu Cortat was inspired by lettering created by Percy J. Delf Smith for the building located at 55 Broadway, s.W. 1, London, that he reproduced in his book, “Civic and Memorial Lettering*.
This typeface is a lineal of monumental roman capitals with classical proportions, that possesses very slight serifs due to the use of brushes in its creation. A character used for titles and shopfronts, it does not possess a lowercase, but is available in Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. The letters A and I have variants available for Basque.
Percy J. Delf smith R.D.I., Civic and Memorial Lettering, Adam & Charles Black, London, 1946.
Romain 20 is a well-rounded and clear-cut interpretation of a French elzevir, revisited to suit twenty-first century taste. Designed by Alice Savoie, the family is released in 2020 after 8 years in the making.
Romain 20 is a contemporary adaptation of a metal typeface originally named “Romain Vingtième siècle”, distributed by the French Fonderie Allainguillaume at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Savoie stumbled across the typeface in a 1902 edition of the journal La fonderie typographique and was immediately seduced by its texture on the page.
The typeface features a unique combination of flavours, with some attributes that are very much reminiscent of French publishing and jobbing work of the period. Soft bowl terminals are balanced by sharp bracketed serifs. The typeface combines a certain idea of French elegance with a hint of Art Nouveau frivolity.
The typeface was initiated as a revival of the text cuts of the roman and italic styles. A bold and a bold italic were later added to the family for greater versatility. The generous and sturdy proportions of the regular and italic styles have been fine-tuned to be optimal at text size, while the bold variant can prove particularly efficient in display. The italic retains generous proportions, making it fairly comfortable to read in continuous settings. The bold is particularly dark.
Type design: Alice Savoie
Typeface development: Fátima Lázaro
Font mastering: Roxane Gataud
Stockmar is Matthieu Cortat's interpretation of a baroque typeface by Johann Rudolf Genath II (1720). Originally available in three different italics (more or less geometrical, more or less cursive, more or less dynamic), it has been modified so as to obtain a “new engraving”, easier to use, with only one italic.
Rough, robust and aggressive, it can be applied to many different uses, whether meticulous or “everyday”. It remains nonetheless a character for body text, designed for use in books. The Stockmar numbers are uniquely of the old-style kind, in proportional and tabular variants.
The Stuart typeface possesses the general forms and proportions of a 15th century Venetian kind. Matthieu Cortat designed it with a calligraphic reference in mind giving it a classic, regular sobriety. Its general appearance is nonetheless resolutely contemporary. Its italic is inspired by the first italics of Alde Manuce and Francesco Griffo: barely slanted, its axis of inclination varies only slightly. Stuart is available in three weights, along with their corresponding italics.
A bookish body type, it is available in a number of optical bodies for increased legibility. Stuart Titling (for sizes larger than 14 points) is narrower, its downstrokes and upstrokes are more stated. As for Stuart Text it suits mid sized bodies between 9 and 14 points. Stuart Caption, larger and of solid build, is for use with bodies of 9 points and under.
Thelo is a type family that emerged from a consideration of the publishing conditions in the digital era.
Designed by Tassiana Nuñez Costa between 2014 and 2020, the typeface aims to answer contemporary editorial questions of coherence and legilibility accross medias and reading formats. In order to adapt to different reading contexts, on screen as well as on paper, and to allow for an efficient hierarchization of content, Thelo has three variations of optical sizes (Display, Text and Micro) that refer to the optical settings typically used by punchcutters of the lead type era. Applied to digital typography, this principle allows the optimization of reading comfort on screen.
The constraints of digital media have driven Tassiana Nuñez Costa to make some striking formal choices:
Thelo Text (Regular, Italic, Bold) is adapted to the composition of running text. Its clean and functional design brings it closer to modernist style typefaces but its pointed connections and terminations evoke certain characteristics of flared glyphic typefaces.
Thelo Display (Light, Regular, Bold) has been designed for composing large sized texts such as titles. Its design is enhanced by lively and sharp lines.
Finally, Thelo Micro (Regular, Italic, Bold) is tailored to the composition of smaller sized texts such as footnotes and captions. Its quite solid rectangular serifs provide it with the aesthetic of a slab serif.
Thelo is named after the Thelocactus, a variety of cactus native to Mexico: linking the harsh aspect of on screen display and the arid lands of desert zones.
Zénith is a typeface intended for editorial design. Thanks to the possibilities offered by Variable Fonts format, Graphic designers can modulate both weight and optical size, transforming Zénith from a typeface designed for small sizes of body text into a particularly elegant and contrasted display typeface.
Here Matthieu Cortat delivers his personal interpretation of Zeno, a typeface cut by Charles Malin in 1936 for the German-Italian publisher Giovanni Mardersteig, that he discovered in the Sanctum Evangelium, printed in 1963 by the Officina Bodoni. He adds a Cyrillic character set absent from the original model.
The relatively sizable width an taut curves of Zénith give it a generous and jittery appearance that permeates the different styles. The axis is heavily slanted, giving the C a characteristic silhouette. With its wide serifs, it already has the makings of a “classic”. The heaviest weights appear intentionally stocky while never veering into caricature. The italics are calm and balanced and only slightly slanted, and they discreetly allow a particular word to stand out, or on the contrary, an entire paragraph to be read with ease.
The rhythm is stable, ample and regular in the Text styles, but its true character asserts itself in the Display styles. The contrast between wide and narrow letters grows as the thin strokes become even thinner and the x-height is reduced.
Zénith Text could be compared to a swimmer before a race: well built, flexible, warmed up but calm, breathing deeply and regularly. Zénith Display would be closer to a marathon runner, skin tightly stretched over lean and jittery muscles.
A typeface clearly designed for reading that also gradually reveals a stark personality as its optical size is increased.
Zénith is a typeface intended for editorial design. Thanks to the possibilities offered by Variable Fonts format, Graphic designers can modulate both weight and optical size, transforming Zénith from a typeface designed for small sizes of body text into a particularly elegant and contrasted display typeface.
Here Matthieu Cortat delivers his personal interpretation of Zeno, a typeface cut by Charles Malin in 1936 for the German-Italian publisher Giovanni Mardersteig, that he discovered in the Sanctum Evangelium, printed in 1963 by the Officina Bodoni. He adds a Cyrillic character set absent from the original model.
The relatively sizable width an taut curves of Zénith give it a generous and jittery appearance that permeates the different styles. The axis is heavily slanted, giving the C a characteristic silhouette. With its wide serifs, it already has the makings of a “classic”. The heaviest weights appear intentionally stocky while never veering into caricature. The italics are calm and balanced and only slightly slanted, and they discreetly allow a particular word to stand out, or on the contrary, an entire paragraph to be read with ease.
The rhythm is stable, ample and regular in the Text styles, but its true character asserts itself in the Display styles. The contrast between wide and narrow letters grows as the thin strokes become even thinner and the x-height is reduced.
Zénith Text could be compared to a swimmer before a race: well built, flexible, warmed up but calm, breathing deeply and regularly. Zénith Display would be closer to a marathon runner, skin tightly stretched over lean and jittery muscles.
A typeface clearly designed for reading that also gradually reveals a stark personality as its optical size is increased.