On the design features of the latin regular
The slightly rounded serifs soften the screen rendering artefacts and mirror the curves in the arches of the letter forms. The serifs are slightly asymmetrical to pull the gaze up towards the x-height to aid the reading process. The squarish letter forms increases the counter and aperture size, and adapts better to the rendering grid of screens.
The arch of the stem on the a mirrors the downwards stroke on the c and e. Avoiding a thickening of the end of the arch, opens the aperture for better legibility. The spur of the a, d and u mirrors the in-stroke of the n.
The counter’s inflexion point top right corner pushes outwards, to create more whitespace for the counter, resulting in a clearer screen rendering in situations where the text must be rendered in a small number of pixels.
The sharp corner in between the upper and lower bowls of the bi-cameral g allows the white space to be more prominently rendered both in print and especially on screen. It allows the two bowls to be large while allowing a clearly rendered white space between the bowls at low resolutions. I found that the more squeezed for room I was, the more radically sharp the curve could be designed. Taken to it’s extreme was the 90 degree angle found in the g.
The arm of the f is relatively short, yet strong. It is certainly a move away from the Linotype style fs of the line caster era. These very compressed fs became the norm for newspapers set with Linotype line casters, as they could not kern. Here the flag is squarish like the arm of the r, the ear of the g, and the descender of the j. The arm of the f meets the stem with an inflexion point like in the r, applying the general principle from the n.
The extremely open shape of the e and c is balanced by the strong downwards stroke. The stroke stress is slightly rotated to achieve this effect. The design is reminiscent of Otl Aicher’s Rotis design. Whatever one must think of his design, it stands that very open apertures are desirable from a legibility standpoint, that the large negative space must be balanced by the weight of the stroke, and finally that the stroke modulation of a calligraphic axis imparts a stronger essence of the letter in question. These elements have to be individually balanced, taking into account the general design.
On the design features of the upper case and small caps
As I chose to design all three EU scripts – Latin, Cyrillic and Greek – I had to design them in such a way that they could be set in the same line with each other. In Cyrillic text from the Latin script can both be written in the original Latin based script or transliterated into Cyrillic. In languages based on the Latin script, Cyrillic and Greek would mostly be transliterated. In Greek, Cyrillic would most likely be transliterated, and languages based on the Latin script could either be written in the Latin script or transliterated. To achieve consistency, the vertical metrics had to be the same.
What seems a traditional choice in Greek typeface design is to use Latin style capitals and small capitals combined with a uniquely Greek lower case design. To choose this approach is certainly easy, as it requires little adaptation, but I feel there is an opportunity to return to the Greek uppercase and small caps, and try to design a more uniquely Greek design, more in line with the lowercase design.
Finding the proper proportions and weight for the small capitals proved much more of a challenge than to design the uppercase characters. The large areas of negative space within the small caps had to be matched by quite heavy stroke weights to blend in with the lowercase. Especially the horizontal strokes had to be quite a bit darker than the horizontals in the uppercase characters. Where the uppercase characters had slightly larger serifs, the small caps used the same size as in the lower case.
Accommodating the many diacritics for the chosen languages, meant designing separate versions of the diacritics for the lower- and upper case characters. This was done to enable lines to be set solid or with very little leading. As the descenders deliberately were kept as short a possible, the cedilla, comma accents and ogonecs were a challenge to design so that they would render distinct from each other on the screen.
On the design features of the italic
The serifs reflect the regular style serifs, and creates coherence across the scripts and styles. The inflection point inside the aperture of the n, is repeated from the regular style. It helps in this case to optically enlarge the inside whitespace, and to aid the eye up and to the right while conserving space by allowing a narrow letter shape.
The stems are straight, but with curves towards in- and out-strokes. This helps create a rendering of repeated and consistent vertical patterns.
The unconnected diagonal stroke of the k allows more whitespace in this dense letter form. The leg of the diagonal stroke retains a very open form aiding a clearly defined negative space between both it’s apertures and the inter-character space.
The in- and out-strokes of curved strokes is closely related to the diagonal in- and out-strokes. They are open and fast, remaining clearly italic without needing much of a slant, thus aiding legibility. The strokes however still allow a bite in the page with their sharp endings.
Large pseudo ink-traps, carved in between the stem and the bowl creates enough whitespace to render both a large counter and a long stroke joining the stem, enhancing the flowing nature of italic writing.
On the design features of the greek
The Greek script is in essence a serif-less script. To connect it with the Latin design the in-stroke of the η is inspired from the in-stroke of the regular a, and the Latin base serifs. The approach to apertures in the Greek script is identical to the Latin script. An inflection point optically enlarges the whitespace and allows more legible screen rendering.
The stress axis of the Greek script is different from the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. To accentuate this feature while keeping the stress axis proper closer to the Latin design, the stems have slight swellings and a curved endings.
The κ has an unconnected diagonal stroke that mirrors the Latin design, and also here increases the whitespace and aides legibility.
The in-stroke of the ς mirrors the italic style of the Latin design. Where as the italic is slanted and fast, this Greek is upright and therefore less pronounced because it is slower written. It thusly remains closer to the size of the Greek stem stroke endings.
Compared to Latin, the Greek script has many more characters based on round strokes. This does give a lighter feel to the line of text, as there are no serifs to clearly mark the baseline as in Latin and Cyrillic. In Greek other elements have to set the direction. The clear out-strokes in characters such as α, τ, π, ι, κ, and λ, are instead leading the eye along the line.
Ligatures of the common λλ and γγ were designed and are slightly lighter than the separate glyphs kerned together.
On the design features of the Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script is admittedly an amalgamation of elements from the Latin- and Greek script – amongst others. Many features from the two scripts are repeated verbatim, with a leaning towards latinized forms. What mostly separates the letter forms from the Latin and Greek script are the proportions and historically- and culturally based peculiarities of certain letter forms.
Base serifs follow the Latin regular design, whereas the upper terminals mirror the Latin italic design. The outstroke of the arm of the б follow the stress axis with the Latin design, while the stroke ending is shared with the Greek design.
The dense distribution of vertical stems and the relative lack of ascenders and descenders create the darker lines for Cyrillic. It makes the interlinear space more prominent, and creates thus higher contrast paragraphs.
The breve with ball-endings is peculiar to the Cyrillic design.
A special challenge is to adapt Latin uppercase forms to the x-height, and match them with letter forms identical to the Latin lowercase. There is no easy way to do this, especially in a semi-modular typeface like Markant. It is a question of creating an internal logic and then breaking it as few times as possible.
On the combination of Latin, Cyrillic and Greek
The design of Markant is neither strictly dictated by a pen metaphor, nor is it completly modular. A library of related shapes are used to solve similar problems across all three scripts, weights and styles.
The semi-modular approach makes the work of harmonising the appearance of all three scripts easier, having a 'library' of shapes to solve identical problems brings coherence to the scripts. The big challenge is to develop a system – a shape library – that can work in all the selected scripts without impairing the nature of the scripts.
On the weights and styles
The x-height of the weights and styles is optically corrected to appear to have the same size. The means that the italic has a the lowest x-height, and the Extra-Bold has the highest.
