Classicism – Fragments of Beauty

Nota, A Didot Font For Vogue

elementi — Sun, 25 Nov 2018 17:09:36 +0000

Almost two decades ago, Luca and I developed this classicist beauty mixed with some futuristic elements. It contains asymmetric serif remnants which are exact clone parts of a reduced set of curve segments used to create the entire alphabet. Unlike as it may seem on a first glance we didn’t use any of the existing Didot or Bodoni digital fonts but built it from the scratch. Its basis were original historical letters cut for Firmin Didot in the eighteenth century. It had only capital letters and a set of futuristic numbers. It is a task that has fallen into oblivion now for a while as today we have seemingly so many typefaces at the hand to create expressive editorial layouts. Quite often, though, those efforts suffer from something that Luca Stoppini himself probably would have called looking “cheap”. I remember the fun it was to create many versions and ideas for a “futurizable” classicist font as this in itself is kind of a contradiction from both a stylistic and historical point of view. Thanks again, Luca, for the great possibilities you gave me to develop myself in the direction of experimental typeface design. Cheers! See also

Incantation

elementi — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 07:13:50 +0000

As part of my research work for Condé Nast, Italy, namely for a GQ magazine concept there remained some ultra classicist typefaces that weren’t used in the end. One of them is Incantation, a daring and mostly very experimental character. It breathes the air of Didot and others referring to its extreme contrast between stems and hairlines but it looses all their curves. They were replaced by strictly rectangular diamond like shapes. Its title derived from a fashion story by Vogue Italy. Its inspiration came from couture dresses and one its most dominating elements that is that of lace material. Like few others this material reflects femininity with an air of mysticism around it. Later on I used its strictly geometric forms for a personal research about Giorgio Armani’s brand. I imagined the ‘I’ as kind of a perfume bottle or package on which mystic black and white couture shoots should be projected. Credits: Paolo Roversi, Peter Lindbergh | Photography

Memoir

elementi — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 07:51:03 +0000

It was Luca Stoppini from Condé Nast asking me to do for a magazine concept (GQ) a Didot like typeface which should have a definite “computer influenced” shape. At this time we both experimented a lot with what later became a series of experimental typefaces. I started out doing some very rough sketches of characters that have a free classicist Bodoni spirit but consisted mainly in straight Bézier curve segments put together very quickly. Certainly my years long studies around the Italian punch cutters’ typefaces of the 18th century were quite helpful to not feel the need to hassle a lot with these shapes. They came quite natural to me and most of them stayed as they were originally sketched in the first trials. Credits: Paolo Roversi | Photography