Adelle

Adelle: an individual, readily legible slab serif

The multipurpose slab serif Adelle of the Typetogether foundry is at its best when used to set newspaper and magazine text. But it also cuts a good figure in other applications.

Veronika Burian and José Scaglione, Adelle’s designers, have created an extensive font family in Adelle that can be used in texts and headlines. It was the aspiration of both designers not to become over-involved in the design of individual weights but to keep the overall concept in view. In the case of Adelle, they were thus able place a focus on text setting when creating the medium weight variants, but were able to integrate these harmoniously in the font family as a whole.

There is but little contrast between the various letters of Adelle in terms of their linear thickness. Its character is mainly determined, as is only appropriate for a slab serif, by the accentuated serifs. They have a rectangular form with convex base and softened upstrokes. The stems of the arches and bars, on the other hand, have no curves, providing the font with a more formal, somewhat technical look. The punctuation marks are in marked contrast to this. With their pronounced rounded, rectangular form, they represent a pleasant soft counterpoint to other more austere characters. It is the bevelled line caps and slightly angled endings that endow Adelle with its dynamic character.

The pronounced serifs and lack of marked contrast in terms of linear thicknesses ensure that text set in Adelle remains well-defined and distinct even under difficult production conditions, such as newspaper typesetting. Thanks to their relatively large x-height, the medium weight letters, in particular, are also readily legible in the smaller sizes.

But it is in the larger font sizes that the personality of the font with its high recognition factor really comes into its own. The various features are clearly visible, communicating the unique nature of the font.

Adelle is available in six weights: Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold, Extrabold and Heavy. The corresponding Italic versions exhibit slightly more contrast in line thicknesses, while the arches are more sinuous and many of the characters appear in different forms. Available in all variants through the OpenType feature are small caps and uppercase and lowercase numerals. There are far more ligatures than in standard font sets. For example, Veronika Burian and José Scaglione have created eye-catching ligatures for ch, st and Th. And, last but by no means least, the font supports 33 languages and thus also includes characters for use in setting texts in Central European languages. In all, there are up to 900 glyphs available in every Adelle weight.

And yet another special feature is provided in the form of the OpenType stylistic sets. Designers will find in these pictogram collections arrows, symbols and special characters that are compatible with every font weight.

Adelle is a thoroughly developed, highly legible slab serif that is perfect for setting magazine or newspaper text. It comes into its own not just in these contexts, but also when used for headlines. But the distinctive personality of Adelle is particularly apparent in the larger font sizes and in this form it will give a publication a particularly individual touch. Because of its unique character, Adelle can be used, inter alia, for job work and commercial texts.

In the 2010 European Design Awards (ED Awards) competition, Adelle was awarded Gold in the category “Original Typeface”.


On the next page you will find real examples of where Adelle has been used.

more ... Adelle in Use

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