Jade O'Sullivan

CINQUE is a new Slab Serif Display Font inspired by Avant-Garde, Art Deco & the aesthetics of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. It gives a new meaning to slab serif with a fresh and authentic touch. This playful and contemporary font incorporates various character alternates allowing flexibility and more creative possibilities. Geometric, fun & fancy!

A disc jockey-only promotional sleeve for a 1964 [45 rpm] release of “Close to Me” and “Let Them Talk” by Dan Penn featured the song titles printed in a stencil typeface on the record sleeve. Closely resembling a stencil version of Franklin Gothic but with its own unique characteristics, this design has been reinterpreted as Turntable Stencil JNL and is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, Dan Penn is a singer-songwriter-record producer, often collaborating with Dewey Lindon “Spooner” Oldham; both closely associated with the late Rick Hall’s Fame recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1964, Hall started the Fame record label, and for a time it was distributed by Vee-Jay Records of Chicago, the first major Black-owned record label in the United States. Penn’s release was only the second for the new label; Fame 6402.

Tarif is a typeface family inspired by the multicultural utopia of Convivencia - the peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Christians and Jews in tenth century Andalusia that played an important role in bringing to Europe the classics of Greek philosophy, together with Muslim culture and aesthetics. Designed for Zetafonts by Andrea Tartarelli, is a slab serif typeface with a humanist skeleton and inverted contrast, subtly mixing latin zest, calligraphic details, extreme ink traps, and postmodern unorthodox reinvention of traditional grotesque letter shapes. The exuberant design, perfect for titling, logo and display use, is complemented by a wide range of seven weights allowing for solid editorial use and great readability in body text. Matching italics have been designed with the help of Maria Chiara Fantini and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini, while Rania Azmi has collaborated on the design of the arabic version of Tarif, where the humanist shapes and inverted contrast of the latin letters find a natural connection with modern arabic letterforms. As buoyant as reliable, Tarif includes also a wide array of Open Type Features (alternates, ligatures, positional numerals, case sensitive punctuation) to make design smooth and multi-script projects as exciting as a surf ride in the sunny Tarifa.

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.