I have noticed that there is a quiet war being waged by designers, typographers and enthusiasts alike, against the thin, wispy text faces that characterize most of today’s digital type.
The weapons in our arsenal? Robust, dark faces such as Dolly, Quadraat, Bembo Book, Absara. Dark, meaty faces all.
So what are your favourites for text? What of all these light, anemic faces that litter the typescape? Opinions? Comments?
The one that made me see the (dark) light: Renard in Smeijers’ book, Counterpunch.
The problem isn’t new, but a condition of hi-res, digital typography, which uses single master fonts optimized for mid-size text (hence weak for smaller text), and production processes that have little or no “gain”.
Some of the first faces to address it were Adobe Garamond, Charter, Scala, and yes, Quadraat.
I think you will find that’s it’s an issue addressed by a large percentage of digital text face designs, it’s certainly something I consider for all my serifed designs.
One solution is to provide dif
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