Bo Berndal, the master Swedish typographer, is the eponymous designer of
Berndal, a contemporary text family with five different styles. This family represents a new achievement for Bo Berndal, who has spent many years working to optimize text legibility in the printed media. Several small tricks make the
Berndal family an interesting milestone in legibility.
Berndal's letterforms contain large x-heights. Large x-heights open up the counterforms of letters, making text appear lighter on a page, but their correspondingly shorter ascenders and descenders can hinder legibility. This does not occur in
Berndal at all!
Coupled with this experiment,
Berndal's various font weights display a certain softness and roundness. The letterforms themselves are relatively wide, with an overall consistency in width. The calligraphic nature of the strokes has been minimized, yet a contrast stroke-thickness is still to be noticed within the alphabet.
Berndal's five styles offer almost everything that one could want from a good text family. The
Regular weight may be paired with
Small Caps, Italic, Bold, and
Bold Italic. All styles ship in the OpenType format, and include tabular and old style figures. The two italic weights are made up of true italics, not obliques.
The
Berndal family is a part of the
Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH.
