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.