Graphic Downloads

 Splendid Quartett Font Family

The traditional division of a type-face family into four designs pertains to every body type. However, jobbing typography calls for a richer tonal scale. Its purpose is to decorate, to represent and to please. Splendid Quartet is an example of a combination of heterogeneous sources of inspiration into a single harmonious formation. An American-style script is accompanied by a subtle English-type Roman type face with a bold design. The whole is reinforced with a Germanic Grotesk. The designs as such do not surpass the significance of their models, but the real charm of this family consists in the sensitive interplay of perfect, even though antagonistic shapes. Pure elegance, refinement and gracefulness radiate from this quartet of type faces. The basic design is a paraphrase of Didot, but it is also inspired by Modern, a type face of English provenance. The details of the serifs, however, are not rounded, but left in a coarser, more interesting engraved form. Splendid Script functions in this case as italics, having the same x-height of lower-case letters as the basic design. The script was freely transcribed from the pattern-book of the New York Type Foundry from 1882, paying regard to numerous other sources of that period. This resulted in a blend of balanced typographical flavours, as if a connoisseur smoker had blended together some fine tobacco. It is by far the most fitting material for graphic design of festive printed materials and an ideal supplement to engravings and etchings.