Typeface of the Month: Ravenscar
By Jeremy Tankard
Ravenscar, our newest Typeface of the Month, is the new typeface from Jeremy Tankard. It’s an old face Slab Serif principally designed for typographers to craft extended text, the design of books, and detail in publishing. The type comprises of four optical sizes: Text, Large Text, Display, and Fine. The Text fonts are low in contrast whilst the Display variants show a higher degree of stroke difference. This is further increased in the Fine fonts which owe more to mannered lettering and have tighter proportions and sharper detailing; designed for short text at large sizes.
Careful attention has been given to improve the image of set text at small sizes, with modifications made across the optical size range. The Text, Large Text, and Display fonts work in harmony together, with the Fine styles are optimized for much larger use. With over 1000 glyphs in each font, the comprehensive character set makes advanced typographic detailing easy to achieve. OpenType features allow access to a full range of alternates including optically designed small capitals, extensive figure sets, and correctly aligned and sized sorts. In previous typesetting methods it was common practice to swap out the word space (or append it) with mid, thick, thin, or even hair spaces depending on the context of use. Such detailing is explained by expert typographers including Geoffrey Dowding, Jost Hochuli, and Jan Tschichold. With digital technology, Ravenscar incorporates an extra level of spacing in addition to standard pair kerning. A range of adjustments are applied to the standard word space in order to amend visually inconsistent gaps and balance the line of set text.
Typeface of the Month: Ravenscar
Foundry: Jeremy Tankard Typography
Designer: Jeremy Tankard
Release: 2024
File Formats: .otf, .woff, .woff2
Optical versions: Text, Large Text, Display, Fine
Styles: Roman, Italic
Weights: (ExtraLight in Fine family only) Light, Regular, Bold, Black
Price per style/family: from £100 GBP per weight pack (please note that Ravenscar is licensed in weight packs and each pack includes all the related optical fonts at no additional cost—making it a very cost effective way to achieve exceptional typography).
