Ode

Ode is a pleasant and vibrant family in five weights with a strong personality. It’s equipped with every feature a good quality text typeface needs: ligatures, extended language support, and various figure sets.

The typical characteristics of broken script typefaces such as their formal rigidness, weighty appearance and archaic character shapes, limit their use in body text today. They are far less readable than say, Humanist typefaces.

With Ode I’ve tried to disprove this. A broken script typeface such as the Gothic script (textura) can be highly legible if the design is approached in a less orthodox way and solves the above issues that conflict with our ideas of legibility.

By replacing hard corners with round ones and giving the characters a more curvy and smoother overall design, the typically stern appearance of the typeface is greatly diminished, even with the ‘fracture’ of the counters still intact. My next step was to apply a very gentle slant and shift the weight within each letter slightly towards the top. Lastly, I replaced all Gothic script model characters which are unfamiliar to us with those of the humanist construction. These are compatible as both letter types are based on writing with the broad-nibbed pen.

If you want to find out more about Ode read my article about the development of this typeface on I Love Typography

Übrigens: Diesen Artikel kannst du auf Design Made in Germany auf Deutsch lesen.