Liminal Type Specimen

Liminal walks the line between classical roman and fraktur blackletter. She’s

a postmodernist icon, creating a new

ripple in the waters. To match the tried

and true postmodernist mix of lowercase letters, she’s got a blackletter heavy set

of capitals that will soon be joined with a secondary set of roman heavy capitals.

This will allow maximum flexibility for the user. We want to introduce our work in progress personality now as a promo-

tion for the later launch of Liminal in her fullest potential.

Each lowercase letter utilizes the subtle-

ties of condensed curvature and nicks in order to portray the smooth ripples that roman executes and the robust wave that blackletter drives.

With this, Liminal struts with class and

creates a fresh look to the page that is

the texture to the eye that braille is to the finger. A smooth criminal articulating her message unquestionably.

Fraktur, although beautiful with its decorative features,

often creates difficulties in legibility.

Roman, although more simplified in form,

presents itself with unquestionable legibility.

Liminal x Didot:

letters.

characteristics that Liminal pulls from.

capitals grandiose, it uses the wide

Didot represents the classic roman

Liminal nods at the roman characteristics by pulling the thicks and thins into its

In order to keep the blackletter heavy counterspace that Didot and many other romans have.

The evolution of Liminal shows an

interesting quarrel between roman and blackletter.

We see this most clearly through the

lowercase a. Although she began her journey with rotundus edges with a

uniquely rotated counter for the double story a, it was quickly adapted to

incorporate more fraktur characteristics.

Instead of thin, disappearing tails, she

opted for blunt ends characteristic from chisel point pens.

The single story a simply nods at a

lowercase o with an additional tail. This presented itself with an elegant, yet almost boring blackletter a.

Yet it was a necessary step in order to reach the final lowercase, two story a.

The bowl takes exactly from the lower

left hand side of the o, and the dipped move at the top was modified from the more extreme single story a, or o. The result is an unusual a that adjusts its

weight at the bottom in terms of stroke weight to maintain an optical balance.

The most physical, clear way

Fette Fraktur by Johann

the rest of the letters was to

Old Style by Frederic Goudy

to approach the process for use large scale roman and

fraktur fonts as a base, which were then layered in tracing

paper to see and incorporate characteristics of both.

Christian Bauer and Goudy

were used as the base stud-

ies. Additionally, drawing out these base fonts allowed for

an in depth study of fine-grain characteristics, which was

essential in order to under-

true meshing of two diametri-

the two juxtaposing styles of

had to find a fluidity of curves

stand how to smoothly mesh typefaces.

The original Frankenstein

method created just that— a Frankenstein font. It was

uncoordinated and stiff. For a

cally opposing faces, Liminal

that morphed between roman and fraktur.

She creates a dance that

leads the ripples after every step.

Start the ripple.

This book uses Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann’s Helvetica 9/13 and Firmin Didot’s Didot 9/14 in order to showcase Liminal’s first edition type specimen booklet.