I love it when a type family is allowed to cross the invisible threshold between expected, practical proportions and something that bumps up against the limits of what we can read and perceive. Job Clarendon is already a narrow typeface. But with the encouragement and art direction of Bethany Heck, Iâm sending you some new Hairline weights that are so narrow, they make the original version feel like Hellenic Wide!
Job Clarendon is already a narrow typeface. But with the encouragement and art direction of Bethany Heck, Iâm sending you some new Hairline weights that are so narrow, they make the original version feel like Hellenic Wide!
In the nineteenth century, job printers relied on wood types in an electric array of widths to fill up their flyers and broadsides. Bethany and I are super curious how contemporary designers can translate this playful approach to typographic proportions to variable fonts, navigating between conventional and extreme proportions to find a sweet spot for each particular project, or perhaps even each individual headline within it. (Unfortunately, I am omitting the variable version for now because some outlines are so brittle they donât survive the conversion...yet đ )