Typeface of the Month: Marble

Our Typeface of the Month: Marble is a new versatile sans serif of the URW Asterisk Type Collection.

How do you introduce a new twist into a sans serif to create a font that is truly modern but, unlike the typical geometric sans serifs, full of character? It’s a challenging design brief but that’s where designers Vaibhav Singh and Alessia Mazzarella began when they started to create Marble for URW’s Asterisk Type Collection.

It’s a delicate balance that sees the structure and expected functionality of sans serifs in harmony with generous proportions and a more humanistic style.

The main point of departure was the idea of having full-bodied letters. Marble derives its character from the generous roundness of the x-heights which is balanced by the striking horizontal or vertical cuts to the terminals. The result is a readable font that encourages the eye to move from one shape to the next and that offers a range of possibilities for digital and print for corporate and publishing use.

What’s distinctive about this design is that the overall letter shapes have a full- bodied presence on the page. That gets pushed even further in the wider widths, says Vaibhav Singh. “For instance,” he says, “there’s an alternative approach to headlines, the idea of fitting a lot of narrow type into a headline is usually the case, but what if you want to set a headline with a lot of width and presence, would that be something you could do with a heavier weight? That’s the sort of counter intuitive notion that we played with.”

The widest spectrum of use was also a consideration as well as good readability on screen and in print. The result is a large family that is versatile and ideal for establishing hierarchies of information with a wealth of choices for headlines, subheadings, captions and body copy styles that are all in harmony with each other. The Wide style allows headlines to be set with width and presence.

Marble’s three widths (Condensed, Normal, and Wide) range from slender elegance to warmth and playfulness without ever being informal. With nine weights in Latin for each variant and true Italics, Variable Fonts are also available.

Marble

Foundry: URW Type Foundry
Design: Alessia Mazzarella & Vaibhav Singh
Release: August 2019
Widhts & Weights: Condensed, Wide, Display, Display Condensed, and Display Wide, each in nine weights: Thin, Extra Light, Light, Regular, Medium, Semi Bold, Bold, Extra Bold, Heavy + Italics
Price: single weight 59.– € / family 399.– €
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