Hamada

21st century script – Introducing Hamada

Linotype’s Hamada™ typeface is a powerfully built script design bringing the work of English calligrapher Gaynor Goffe into the digital workflow. Working directly from Goffe’s writing, Linotype’s Type Director, Akira Kobayashi, digitized the letterforms in this design. The resulting Hamada captures the feeling of a pen on the page; ink edges out from the contours and moves across curves, letters, and lines! This creates a delightful image, especially in larger point sizes. Thanks to the OpenType font format, Hamada creates an impression very much like that of real calligraphy – an effect that is similar to Linotype’s famous Zapfino® typeface.

Most of the letters in Hamada have alternate forms. The typeface also includes swashes that can appear at the end of a line of text as well as a number of ligatures. When used contextually with the help of OpenType-savy applications, like Adobe InDesign, these alternates will automatically be substituted into the text, assuring an image of randomness, which is not a standard feature of digital fonts! Like all fonts with our OpenType format ‘Com’ character set, Hamada supports 48 Latin-based European languages, including all Latin-based languages spoken in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as the Baltic States and Turkey.