I'm Hua, a designer and bootstrapping founder building Typogram, a brand design tool. As part of running Typogram, I create this digestible weekly guide with fonts, colors, and design ideas to help founders, creators, and makers step up their game in marketing and get creative!
How are you? This weekend I did a lot of renovation in my new home. I have no wifi there so it was incredible to be unplugged from the digital world (the trendy word for this is now metaverse!?). I hope you had a nice weekend! I would love to hear what you did.
img: sample of Fraunces
Similar to EB Garamond, Fraunces is also what's considered an “old-style serif.” An old-style serif communicates traditional values. Comparing Fraunces to Playfair Display, you will notice that Faunce retains the classic seriousness of the serif but lacks the stylish gracefulness of Playfair. But if we compare Fraunces and EB Garamond, though both are old-style serifs, Fraunces offers more personality with "wonky" letters and angler uppercase. Is your project giving investment advice with a saucy attitude? Or reconsidering traditional business, like Misfit Market with grocery shopping? If you are looking to communicate a classic voice with a twist, Fraunces is a fantastic choice.
img: compare Frances with several other serifs
img:Â 9pt, 72pt, and 144pt versions of Fraunces, each with six different weights, not pictured: italics for each weight
img: some wonky instances of Fraunces
img: example of Fraunces; source: FontInUse
Variable font is a new font technology that allows a font to “generate” infinite weights and styles based on predefined parameters by its designers. Usually, if you select a font, you will often have limited weights, such as “regular” and “bold.”
But with variable font, you can have infinite weight choices because you can have everything between regular and bold. This interpolation also works for font styles, which is the case for Fraunces. As a variable font, Fraunces has four types of axes:
Typically, variable fonts come with traditional static versions, making them more compatible with most design apps. These static versions are more than enough for many cool projects. Nevertheless, if you use the variable font version of this font, you can customize the parameters for each axis in CSS to create your unique flavor of the font for your designs!
img: Fraunces being interpolated on soft axis; source: undercase
We will extend the classic yet offbeat theme this week into our color inspiration by featuring this wonderful yet strange painting: Garden of Earthly Delights, created by Hieronymus Bosch between 1490 and 1510. This painting is filled with extremely enigmatic and intricate symbolism.
img: a detail of Garden of Earthly Delights
Can you create a visual for Twitter or Instagram using Fraunces or the color palette we featured today?
…for reading and hanging out here this week! Fraunces is available here.
img: Fraunces infographic
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Please email me [email protected] or find me on Twitter at @HuaTweets.
You can also read the past issues on Typogram's blog.