Grotesk №1 Specimen – 2022

The unusually large format specimen was designed partly in the spirit of the classicism, resembling Bodoni’s specimens, which of some were printed in folio size. Bodoni’s typography with its vibrant clarity and the lack of excessive ornamentation in his prints were the start of a shift leading to modern typography, not talking about shapes or the evolution of serif fonts but the rationality and clarity of a whole layout. While modernist typographers (eg. Jan Tschichold) recognized Bodoni’s developments in typography, most of his principles in design were deemed still unfit for the time of modernism and the birth of – what roughly is – today’s typography. A century later we know that the exclusive use of sans serif fonts and asymmetrical layouts – what the modernists propagated – are not the answer for every problem and the typography of the classicism is anything but tarnished.

With the borders reduced to a single hairline and the folio format changed to A3 – aligning with the idea of standardization of the early 20th century –  this encounter of classicist and modernist ideas – thanks to the underlying similarities in principles – is a harmonic, yet ostentatious way to celebrate my first font family.