Romulus is one of the most beautiful types ever designed. Its slanted Roman, in place of italic, is not a success though. DTL doesn’t seem to have plans to do van Krimpen’s Chanceleresca Bastarda, the great script companion to Romulus.

In spite of their great beauty, van Krimpen’s faces always seem to have suffered from some flaw that prevented their wide use.

Perhaps DTL will make a usable version. I hope so. But I don’t believe it has been released. It has been promised for many years; now it looks like they do have a lot of it completed, but I have no idea when they will release it.

For a type that breathes Van Krimpen’s spirit, but does it with it seems more usefulness than Van Krimpen himself, it seems, see the magnificant (and unbelievably expensive) Trinite.

Romulus would indeed benefit from a proper slanted-Roman,
as opposed to the brutish Morisonian thing it got back then.

hhp

William:

You weren’t kidding. Trinite is gorgeous! The other fonts from TEFF are impressive as well.

http://www.teff.nl/fonts/prijzen.html

Close to 3000 Euros for the whole family. This thing better sing on the page. I’m dying to see how it performs on actual paper.

And that’s for a single user license (one computer, one laser printer), although you are allowed to arrange for imagesetter output as well. Not an impulse buy!

I wonder if anyone has actually used this or has seen it on paper. I mean, certainly, it looks good in the sample provided, but I wonder how it performs day-to-day. A good sign is that it was designed with today’s laser printers in mind.

I can tell that it’ll probably need a bit more leading than normal.

>a bit more leading
It has three different options on extenders, so I suspect that you could adjust these also, if you had the whole thing.

>I wonder how it performs

I don’t have it and it is little used in the US. It blows me away how good it looks though. I don’t know if it has problems in practice, but I suspect it is pretty robust, at least the medium extender versions.

I overlooked the extender variations. Simply brilliant. You can vary the calligraphic elements of the text to fit your purpose.

In tihs case, it should hold up nicely to lengthy reading.

It appears there are quite a few exceptionally talented Dutch designers.

> You can vary the calligraphic elements

Not really. It’s always cloyingly calligraphic.

hhp

I meant the ascenders/descenders. My typographical terminology needs some work. ;-)

>cloyingly calligraphic

I suspect rather it brilliantly transforms calligraphic elements into readable and agreeable type. But I really haven’t seen enough of it in print to know. Perhaps others have. I would be certainly interested to hear.

Jan Middendorp’s book “dutch type” discusses and shows Trinite.
Mathieu Lommen/John Lane’s biography of Bram de Does shows extensive text set in Trinite, as I recall. And discusses it at length. Both books should be available through the Dutch book seller Nijhof & Lee, which has a web site, and elsewhere that I forget.
I worked at Autologic in the early ’80s when it’s Swiss subsidiary Bobst Graphic released Trinite for photosetting. The promotional booklet is a treasure. The cover is shown on pg 160 of Middendorp’s book. I’m so happy I have these books and the booklet!
Based on what I’ve read in the above books, I think Trinite had significant use in the Netherlands in the ’80s.
I’d buy and use it in a minute if it was affordable!
Brian

There is a 600dpi printable Trinite sample sheet on the site, although they caution that it isn’t representative for the quality of printing at 600dpi.

When in the Trinite section, simply click on “sample sheet” near the bottom.

A true 1200dpi sheet is also available by mail order. It seems worth the wait for those interested. 3000 Euros calls for some research and decision-making.

I did get samples from TEFF. They look very good, but the extensive text sample uses the tallest ascenders and widest counter version, in a rather large size. It would be more informative to see the middle extenders and width—which Bringhurst recommends as practically useful—set more at text sizes.

I would like to get the book on de Does, but not sight unseen...

>I’d buy and use it in a minute if it was affordable

I don’t understand TEFF’s version of ’marketing’ if that’s what you call it.

By middle extenders and width, do you mean the “Roman No.2 Wide” flavour?

Bringhurst says “The ordinary roman (in either the wide or narrow width) makes a fine text face for conventional use.” I liked the ordinary roman (middle length extenders) and wide version best. But I would think that the best version would depend on the demands of a particular design. As I said, I don’t have it and haven’t used it, so I am guessing to a great extent.

I’ve heard good things about DTL Documenta, however. This one looks very usable.

yes, it’s very nice. well-balanced letterforms and pleasing flow result in a calm, yet not stark typographic colour. i just wish, they would add at least a bold style for the sans serif family to make it a more complete system.

// alex

I’ve read a couple of books set in Trinité, both published in The Netherlands. It is also used very widely on bookjackets in that country. It reads well and produces a very inviting page.

We considered using Documenta for the ATypI Vancouver materials in 2003, but decided against it after some tests. It reads well but is quite dull. In the end we decided to use Matthew Carter’s Fenway instead.

Of the DTL fonts, I am quite partial to Michael Harvey’s Unico. My friend Brian Morgan introduced it for the redesign of The Walrus magazine, and it works very well, even on the relatively glossy paper.