Seeds of Renaissance · type · round two
Two body faces in the real frame, then three for the eyebrow line. Only one thing changes per block. Through the body section the eyebrow is held at Apfel Grotezk; through the eyebrow section the body is held at Bricolage Grotesque, the face you chose.
The statement is set in Polyamine, standing in for Restora, which is commercial and cannot be embedded. It renders only on a machine with Polyamine installed — elsewhere that line falls back and should be ignored.
“If you take that, then you have to compensate with something more weighty and grounded in the body.”
Two survive, against Polyamine: Bricolage Grotesque first, Bespoke Serif second. Everything else is out and has been moved to the bottom of this page.
Worth noting what that result says, because it is not what I predicted. My pick was Bespoke Slab, on the grounds that it was the most weighty without being fat — and it lost, along with every other serif except one. A sans came first. So the contrast wanted between display and body is wider than a shift of weight inside the same family of shapes: it is a change of kind, not of degree. Slab weight was not the answer; a different skeleton was.
The eyebrow is settled too: Apfel Grotezk, in the section below. That gives all four roles — Polyamine for the billboard, Restora for headings, Bricolage for body, Apfel for the small voice.
Six candidates, ranked. All are free for commercial use. Commercial options exist — Arizona Mix from Dinamo and Right Serif from Pangram Pangram are the strongest — but they cannot be embedded, so they are not shown rather than not considered.
Mathieu Triay · free, SIL OFL
The strongest contrast against the display face, and unmistakably drawn now.
A grotesque with ink traps and deliberately awkward details — the ink traps are the giveaway that it is contemporary rather than revived, which matters given how much has been rejected for looking backwards. Chunky enough to act as a real foil to a sleek display serif rather than a quieter echo of it.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Read the full manifesto · or continue ↓
Indian Type Foundry, via Fontshare · free for commercial use
Sturdy and wide, with flared, slightly odd details.
The serif answer to the same brief. Low contrast, so no hairlines to flicker out on the dark frames, and the flared terminals keep it from reading as a neutral workhorse. Warmer and less of a departure than Bricolage.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Read the full manifesto · or continue ↓
The smallest voice on the page: labels, captions, and the invitation line. Apfel Grotezk was chosen — flat terminals and slightly odd proportions, warm rather than cold-Swiss. The other two are kept for the record.
One practical constraint that decided more than taste did: the line ends in a down arrow, and several otherwise good faces have no arrow glyph at all. Everything shown here carries both the arrow and the middot.
Collletttivo · free, SIL OFL
Flat terminals and slightly odd proportions — the quality you liked in Karla. Warm rather than cold-Swiss, sturdy at 12px reversed out, and it carries the down arrow and middot, which several candidates do not.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Read the full manifesto · or continue ↓
Displaay · free, SIL OFL
Mono gives the most tension against an elegant serif. It reads forward-looking rather than retro-terminal, which most monos fail at. The reservation: mono adds a fourth texture to the system and reads technical, which pulls against groundedness and wholeness.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Read the full manifesto · or continue ↓
Christian Thalmann · free, SIL OFL
A humanist sans with Garamond bones — the most grounded and whole of the three, and the least edgy. Use 500 or above; the light weights disappear on black.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Read the full manifesto · or continue ↓
Kept visible but out of the way, so a later round does not re-propose them. Shown shorter, and without the statement line, since the point is only the body text.
Indian Type Foundry, via Fontshare
Out. The slabs were too much.
This was my pick, on the grounds that it was the most genuinely weighty without being fat. Turned down against Polyamine, which suggests the weight wanted is not slab weight.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Gaëtan Baehr, via Fontshare
Out. Most personality of the six, and still no.
Narrow, slab-ish and mannered.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
Noopur Choksi, Indian Type Foundry
Out, as expected — it sat in the display register.
Included as a demonstration rather than a candidate: a body face picked from the same register as the heading becomes a smaller cousin of it instead of a counterweight.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.
TypeTogether
Out. The baseline did its job.
Here to show what pure restraint looks like. It was never going to survive a brief that keeps rejecting things for being boring.
Human history has always been a story of transformation – of old worlds dying and new ones being born. Every great crisis carries within it the seed of rebirth. We are a movement called to bring forth a civilizational renaissance grounded in Wisdom, Interbeing, Inner growth, Revoligion, Complexity and beyond capitalism.