When choosing a font for the layout of his own book, «Hacer y Componer» («Making and Composing»), Francisco Gálvez decided that the best option would be to design a new typeface that would respond well to the requirements of the book, such as the coexistence of different scripts from around the world on the same page. The result of this design process, which ran parallel to the book’s gestation, is the Otta typeface that we present here. Otta is a versatile design that integrates a dynamic sense of writing (both calligraphic & typographic) with an essence that could be described as artisanal, like hand-drawn lettering. The latter is experienced as a personal reaction to the often unthinking acceptance of the advance of AI as a consumer good. Francisco shares valuable milestones in the self-taught journey he took to design Otta, a family that now includes extended versions of Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, and Latin panUnicode. He also reveals secrets of type design, in this case closely linked to book design, two crafts that the author practices with passion. Otta is undoubtedly Francisco Gálvez’s masterpiece to date. Here are the motivations & challenges that guided him in the design of this typeface.  Read

The latest addition to our type library is a typeface conceived and developed in Mexico that delves into a style little explored in contemporary type design. With both a historical and innovative approach, Gorgias seeks to revitalize the blackletter tradition through a sophisticated and functional interpretation that, made with great passion for detail, results in a renewed and versatile version of the Fraktur style, and in turn in one of the most complete proposals of the genre in today’s type scene. This text traces the foundations and motivations in the design process of Gorgias, explores its formal and functional aspects and highlights its potential to enrich projects with an evocative and dynamic visual aesthetic.  Read

What enigmatic relations of convergence and divergence are woven between literature and cinema? What secret devices aesthetically connect a film, its script-book and the editorial design of that book? These and other questions arise and unfold their singular charm in the pen of Paule Palacios-Dalens, an inquisitive Parisian designer equally passionate about book design, typography, literature and cinema. Her detailed tour begins with “Hiroshima Mon amour”, the famous film by Alain Resnais and scripted by Marguerite Duras. Only for equally passionate and curious readers, here is the translation of a revealing essay by Paule, originally published as “Hiroshima dans la Blanche. Marguerite Duras’s introduction to cinema” by the independent label 202 éditions, then in the French online cinema magazine Débordements. A gourmet delight for lovers of cinema, literature and design.  Read

The Perec super family adds a new style: the Perec Scripte, a script variant that has been a major design and production challenge. Perec Scripte includes two styles of “writing”: bound and unbound letters, both declined in six weights with large linguistic support and many typographic goodies, as well as a decorative version with graphic impact. Here I share with you the secrets of the slow firing of these fonts, a design process that took many years of exploration, drawing, testing, refinement, passion.  Read

For those of you who know us, you know that we like projects that are hard to classify. This is one of them, and it is one that we like very much, the Perec family: a sans grotesque that has a lot to offer. From its origin it responded to quite complex artistic and conceptual criteria, as a tribute to the multifaceted work of French writer Georges Perec, but over time with the addition of new styles it has become a versatile type system offering a diverse palette of easily combinable forms. Here we share with you a brief overview of the design process and the cuisine of these fonts. Just remember that new Perec styles are being prepared! It is an ongoing project. It could not be otherwise, Georges Perec would have wanted it that way.  Read

Carolinéale is a typeface family whose design I started at the end of 2014, when I integrated the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique, in Nancy (FR). I had then the project to work on a typographic version of Carolingian musical notations. The alphabetical typeface associated with this work has evolved since then. Thanks to the support of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (FR) and the sharp eye of Alejandro Lo Celso, I was able to create a complete typeface family. On the occasion of its publication by PampaType, I would like to come back to the principles that guided the design of its forms.  Read

Second and final installment of Tere Schultz’s text on Tuscan letters. Those decorative objects, delicate or extravagant, that inhabit the streets and typographic catalogues of all times, without losing an iota of expressive force. The product of ornamental ingenuity, Tuscan vernaculars dress the street signs of Mexico as much as the stained glass windows of Paris, the ‘fileteados porteños’ of Buenos Aires or the hulls of fishing boats in the Amazon waters. Against this notorious and implausible decorative ubiquity, which alarms many, in the first part of this article Schultz unfolded, like a healing balm, his hypothesis of how the Tuscan style would have been born of a mischievous interpretation of the inscriptions on stone. In this second chapter, it only remains to delight us with some examples of Tuscan vernaculars from some corners of the world.  Read

Tere Schultz delivers a new literary and typographic divertimento for passionate readers. This time she follows one of her personal fixations: the Tuscan letters. Those ornamental objects, delicate or extravagant, that inhabit streets and typographic catalogs of all times, without losing an iota of expressive force. The product of decorative ingenuity, Tuscan vernaculars dress the street signs of Mexico as much as the stained glass windows of Paris, the ‘fileteado porteño’ of Buenos Aires signs or the hulls of fishing boats in the Amazon waters. However, this decorative ubiquity, notorious and implausible, alarms many. Fortunately, like a healing balm, Schultz will deploy here her original hypothesis, suspiciously unexplored, of how the Tuscan style would have been born from a mischievous interpretation of the stone inscriptions (wrongly) called lapidary. Although perhaps here the term ‘lapidary’ is appropriate, since the idea caught the author strolling through a cemetery. (Warning: sensitive material. Agnostic typographers and designers of little faith, please refrain).  Read

Printed or filmed, Jean-Luc Godard’s graphic production surprises by its frequency and formal audacity. Whether inserts or credits, trailers or commercials, press kits or special issues, all of his work bears his trademark, even if his signature does not always formally attest to it. A particular facet of his graphic work here concerns his use of typefaces.  Read

Jorge Iván shares with us the design process and production of his Octothorpe font, plus some other things. He reviews the rise and fall of dry transfer lettering, focusing on the Stripes face, created for that technology, and reveals its unsettling in-use attributes. He finalizes by tackling the process of reanimation of Stripes by way of samples and specimens, and tells us how it ended up becoming a new digital tool, Octothorpe: a typeface with major visual impact that explores new ways of expression by using current resources.  Read

Francis Ramel, member of Nouvelle étiquette, French graphic design bureau based in Metz and in Strasbourg, portrays the challenges and unfolds the design process of this singular project: the design of a bespoke typeface family to be used for the identity and signage system of the cathedral Saint-Étienne de Metz (FR), which turns 800 years old in 2020. This challenging type design task was undertaken jointly by Nouvelle étiquette and the PampaType foundry, which has been a privileged partner of the studio for years.  Read

The following piece is the third article in the ‘type design teaching’ series published in our blog. Jérôme Knebusch wrote this insightful text as part of the pamphlet ‘Quelques réflexions sur Pangramme : learning type design’ to accompany the Pangramme exhibition catalogue edited by the Lorraine school of fine arts, Metz.  Read

Francisco Gálvez presents to us his daring reattempt at a type categorization, a much broader and versatile one, more suitable to our times. The author rethinks the values of preceding classifications and reinterprets them in a new model, one that does not seek to be a classification in itself but an original instrument to situate and study the diversity of today’s typefaces.  Read

On the occasion of the second edition of the Pangramme exhibition catalog, Sébastien Morlighem was invited to contribute the present text which allows, through his personal insights, to build a photograph of the path that the pedagogy of typography has deployed in France in the last 25 years.  Read

This is the first of a series of articles on type design teaching that we will publish in our blog. Thomas Huot-Marchand, French typographer, designer, and director of ANRT (atelier national de recherche typographique / national institute for typographic research) in Nancy, France, presented, with the following text, the 2017 Chaumont edition of the exhibition Pangramme: learning type design originally assembled in 2016 at the ESAL, art school of Lorraine, Metz.  Read

Una vez establecidos los parámetros generales de nuestras cajas de texto, podemos entrar en los detalles —la filigrana, como diría uno de mis clientes—: el ajuste de los valores de justificado y, finalmente, la composición.  Read

I’d come across the name Gerard Unger many times in books and publications before actually meeting him in person. A personal encounter preceded by that much fame is always a curious endeavor. And the first thing one thinks of someone that famous is ‘he probably died years ago’. The paradox is that immortality suits best those who we’ve lost. But what’s even stranger is when the enigma of a name read many times becomes a person of flesh and blood, someone who you can have tea with and talk about anything. That was my personal experience with Gerard Unger. And probably for many of his students too. Looking back I now realize all the things his lessons and encounters unleashed in me. I’ll try to make here, as a humble tribute, a personal portrait of him tethered with thoughts and anecdotes, hoping it may help humanize a figure that might have been mythologized, as is often the case with those who’ve had a huge influence in their time.  Read

El presente texto, una crítica a la tipografía Amster de Francisco Gálvez, constituía el prólogo que la autora hiciera para una pequeña pero poderosa publicación que aun no ha visto la luz. Hasta tanto esa edición física tome vida, anticipamos aquí este relato inextricable de la filosa pluma de Teresita Schultz que, no sin un puñado de disgresiones místicas que arrojan luz sobre los oscuros meandros de la historia del libro, nos invita a construir una mirada perspicaz frente al diseño de una tipografía, sofisticada y moderna, como es Amster. Tales disgresiones incluyen el diseño de iniciales, la iluminación de manuscritos medievales, las relaciones entre insectos y embutidos, y algunas cosas más. Hacia el final y para sorpresa de todos, este prólogo incluía cartas de lectores al parecer prematuramente anoticiados.  Read

This year, from March up to June 2018, Alejandro Lo Celso and Guido Ferreyra came to work at my studio AlfarApPress because they needed a space closer to town center to host the internship of Thomas Bouillet. All this allowed me at some point to be a privileged witness of how his work was evolving. Seeing with a certain closeness what the fine work done by typographers today is, and especially, what they carry out passionately in PampaType.  Read