Typophile

A serif partner to Akkurat

Public Spaces Design0 votes

Hi folks,

Appreciate anyone who chips in to this. Fleshing out a branding/identity project and looking for pairing a serif typeface with Akkurat:

http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkurat/

Akkurat is already established, used in the logo and has been used for body text. It is for a design agency. The challenge I've had is choosing a serif face to partner it. Why? When creating documents with longer passages of text, I'd rather not use Akkurat for absolutely everything. A lot of the clients are Universities and in the Education sector, and I always feel they prefer serifs as well (albeit ungrounded research).

I've been looking for character shapes that match Akkurat (and the usual elements like x-height, descender/ascender height). I feel the old classics just aren't doing it: Baskerville, garamond, bembo, sabon, century, even bodoni – they just seem too big a jump. I feel it will be something more 'modern'. Even slab serif.

So far, I've liked FM by A2 type. I like how it shares the square dots i.e. full stop, 'i', 'j'. I am a fan of Publico and Mercury as well, but don't feel they are right for this.

So that's the pairing challenge – appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Lewis

Hrant H Papazian0 votes

Maybe Adelle-Serif.

hhp

Public Spaces Design0 votes

That's nice, I did not know of Adelle-Serif. The samples are useful that came up on the type together site. And there's a free version – great, will try it out. Thanks!

Public Spaces Design0 votes

An update on this. I have found a good, working example of Akkurat with a serif face:

http://heydays.no/2009/premiss/

I think that's exactly what I was looking for. I regard myself as very good at identifying sans serifs but not as good with serifs, so I can't figure out what has been used for this. It is quite similar to Tiempos (Village) but not quite - a thinner version for one.. I like the rounded off finishes at the end of some of the stems as opposed to a regular serif (in the italic).

Well, any help in identifying would be much appreciated.

R.0 votes

This is Mercury (which you excluded in your first post ;-)).

Public Spaces Design0 votes

Sweet Irony. I actually did suspect that when I was looking at it, but it was hard to tell. Are you certain? It seems quite thin... maybe it is the 'G1' version of it?

---

Upon closer inspection I think it must be. That'll teach me to be so dismissive. It is always amazing how many different ways a typeface can "look" and "feel" even though we usually think of the character of a face has creating a particular, consistent "feel". Context is key. That's why I love type!

So lesson learnt – Mercury goes well with Akkurat.

Captured from web.archive.org on 11 Aug 2017. view this capture