Output details

Alverata: Latin, Greek and Cyrillic typeface. TypeTogether

This typeface is a response to the extraordinarily diverse forms of letters of the Latin alphabet in manuscripts and inscriptions in the Romanesque period (c.1000–1200). While the Romanesque did provide inspiration for architectural lettering in the nineteenth century, these letterforms have not until now been systematically considered and redrawn as a working typeface. The defining characteristic of the Romanesque letterform is variety: within an individual inscription or written text, letters such as A, C, E and G might appear with different forms at each appearance. Some of these forms relate to earlier Roman inscriptional forms, others are highly geometric and resemble insular or uncial forms. The research underlying the typeface involved the collection of a large number of references for lettering of this period, from library research and direct on-site investigation. This investigation traced the wide dispersal of the Romanesque lettering tradition across the whole of Europe. The research developed the argument that Romanesque letterforms can be seen as embodying a consistent set of formal characteristics, but in extremely and productive varied combinations. This combination of identifiable elements and variety offered both direct models and stylistic inspiration for the characters and for the widths and weight variants of the typeface. The ability of the OpenType format to handle multiple stylistic variants of any one character has been exploited to reflect the multiplicity of forms available to stonecutters and scribes of the period. To make the typeface functional in a contemporary environment a lower-case has been added, and formal and informal variants supported. The pan-European nature of the Romanesque design tradition has inspired a pan-European approach to the character set of the typeface, allowing for text composition in all European languages, and the typeface has been extended into Greek and Cyrillic, so that the broadest representation of European languages can be achieved.