A Font named Franciscus

CLIENT
Assisi, Custodia Generale
Role

Art Direction

Honors

ED AWARD - European Design

Franciscus is a new display serif typeface inspired by ancient and handwriting tradition interpreted through a contemporary touch.

Within all the letters there is a dualism between delicate curves and geometric edges, this quality allows the font to work very well in different contexts, adapting to headline dimensions but also to body texts.

The Custodia Generale is a religious organization that constitutes the monumental complex of the Sacred Convent and the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi.

We developed a typographic system for their magazine “Rivista San Francesco” and their new website.  Its name was an easy choice: Franciscus. Franciscus is a new display serif typeface inspired by ancient and handwriting tradition interpreted through a contemporary touch. Our first step before designing the new font was a deep historiographyc research. 

We delved into the amazing world of the Franciscan libraries inside the Cathedral, we analysed the bibliographic archives, including the Cantico delle Creature and the frescoes of the Cathedral, in order to pinpoint some of the distinctive traits of the gothic style of the time.

We started from scratches made with pen and paper to define the raw version of a few letters, it helped us establishing a contact with the heritage of that handwriting tradition. When then we moved to the digital, we used Glyphs software to create the font. We have made various tests on readability and accuracy. The x-height is important for the font, and facilitates a simplified comprehension of the text even when presented in small dimensions.  

More Projects

Discover all the projects and meet all the clients who chose Studiogusto to reach their goals. 

All Projects