Tiempos 46 Tiempos46 Tiempos

THE TIEMPOS COLLECTION

“The Tiempos Collection is a hardworking, modern serif family for editorial typography.” — Kris Sowersby

(“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Design Information”).

The Tiempos Collection of typeface families, released in 2010 (“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Headline Fonts”), includes a fine, headline, and text-based version, each maintaining incredible legibility at their respective sizes, and keeping the elegance of a serif typeface. The Tiempos collection updates the workhorse functionality of Times New Roman and Galaxie Copernicus, becoming a new option for people who don’t want to sacrifice functionality for beauty, both in body text and headlines. Specifically for Tiempos Fine, being released a little later in 2018 (“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Fine Fonts”), this family takes the functionality of the stability of Tiempos Headline and increases the contrast between the thick and thin lines to create an even more elegant headline typeface, (“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Design Information”).

THE TYPEFACE

STORY

Behind the Tiempos Collection, the story begins with the need for a workhorse typeface in redesigning a Spanish newspaper, in hopes of optimizing the word per page count without overcrowding the page with text or sacrificing legibility. This led to taking the newspaper ’s current typeface at the time, Galaxie Copernicus, and creating one which would meet the newspaper ’s goals. Originally, the new typeface was going to be within the same family or collection of Galaxie, but as it was being designed, it became too distinctive to be called under the same parent name (“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Design Information”).

When looking for inspiration, the type foundry, Klim, used Galaxie Copernicus and Times New Roman, two time-proven typefaces for newspapers. In relation to these two inspirations, they both were inspired by Monotype Plantin; the creation of Tiempos looked back to Monotype Plantin as the parent typeface of its two other inspirations, acknowledging the history of where their typeface was originating from.

For the choice of Times New Roman, Klim Type Foundry found inspiration here because of the typeface being such a classic choice with the functionality it holds for as a newspaper typeface. It has incredible functionality and legibility for use in a newspaper, but over the years has become overused (Village: Tiempos Fine). Hence,

the combination of Times New Roman and Galaxie Copernicus in creating the form of Tiempos Text and Headline.

The Tiempos Fine family, created eight years after the original collection (“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Fine Fonts”), increases the line width contrast of Tiempos Headline to enhance the elegance of the typeface for the editorial team at National Geographic Magazine. Tiempos Headline had the aesthetic and functionality the team was looking for but lacked the elegance they wanted to portray with a typeface, and so Tiempos Fine was created and added into the collection.

THE DESIGNER

Kris Sowersby is the mind behind the Tiempos Collection. He has been creating award-winning typefaces since 2007 (“Klim Type Foundry: About”) after opening Klim Type Foundry in 2005 (Thomson).

Sowersby is a self-taught type designer, falling in love with type early in his designing career. In an interview with Eye Magazine, he describes his love of type: “At design school I became enamoured with typography. I loved the simplicity of its raw state – arrangements of black and white space on the page,” (Thomson).

Both Sowersby and Klim Type Foundry are from New Zealand, which influences their typefaces and their business model (Thomson). As a type foundry, they have won awards for typefaces that express a relationship between national identity and design, as well as creating custom typefaces for many New Zealand Organizations. As for their approach to their community, they also support New Zealand nonprofits that benefit the New Zealand community and the environment, (“Klim Type Foundry: About”).

“I loved the simplicity of

[typography ’s] raw state –arrangements of black and white space on the page,”

KRIS SOWERSBY

VISUAL

Differences between Galaxie (grey) and Tiempos (black).

Tiempos Text Regular Italic. Entry and Exit points of the letterfroms

Lowercase Z, Tiempos Headline Family. Medium weight, regular style (left) and italic style (right).

Lowercase Z, Tiempos Headline Family. Medium weight, regular style (left) and italic style (right).

ANALYSIS

Since the inspiration of this typeface comes from newsprint, the differences between Tiempos and Galaxie Copernicus enable Tiempos to be a more workable typeface. At the same point size as Galaxie Copernicus, Tiempos’ “cap-height, ascenders and descenders are shorter, allowing for tighter line spacing without crowding,” (“Klim Type Foundry: Tiempos Design Information”). This particular aspect of Tiempos text allows for a higher word count in newsprint per column without overcrowding the page with text.

Sowersby describes the influence of Times New Roman as it relates to his design of Tiempos: Times has a certain British sleekness to it, a nice mix of smooth curves and sharp points,” (Thomson). This is notable in the comparison between the entry and exit points in the Italic letterforms for all the families, where the entry stroke is a flag, the exit point contrasts with its curve (Village: Tiempos Fine).

Although, the sharp edges become a much more noticeable feature when in its regular style. The curves of the letterforms turn characteristically blunt. Here is a comparison of the lowercase Z from the Tiempos Headline family. Although the curves and edges are highly contrasted between these styles, the same personality is still present, with the bifurcated bracketed slab serifs.

Between the families themselves, going from fine to medium, the contrast of the stroke line weight goes from high to low depending on its purpose as a display typeface or body copy. Looking closer at the uppercase T of Tiempos Fine and Headline, the serif style changes as well to allow for the higher contrast for the display typeface; in Tiempos Fine, the serifs are more characteristically transitional, versus Headline which continues the bracketed slab serif of the original collection.