Arsenica is a serif typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro for Zetafonts, and developed by a design team including Mario De Libero, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. [...] Arsenica is a serif typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro for Zetafonts, and developed by a design team including Mario De Libero, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. The design of Arsenica takes its inspiration from italian poster design at the beginning of the century, a time where typography, lettering and illustration where closely interwoven. Dawning nationalist movements, rather than using the modernist language, pushed on traditional Old Style letterforms often imbued with Art Nouveau and Deco sensibility. Artists like Giorgio Muggiani not only illustrated posters for Cinzano, Pirelli and Rinascente, but also provided logo design for newspapers, like "Il Popolo d'Italia". Starting from this mix of eclectic influences, Canovaro first developed the Arsenica Antiqua family, designed as display typeface that keeps the original Old Style low-contrast, wide proportions and quirky stylistic inventions. These where then distilled in a high contrast, Arsenica Display family, expanding the weight range to include both poster, ultrabold weights and lighter weights that give the design a distinct calligraphic flavour. Bringing the letterforms into contemporary taste meant also developing alternate letterforms that were included in the Arsenica Alternate family, that drops the art nouveau details in favour of a more controlled modern serif aestethic. Finally, Arsenica Text was developed by expanding the design space in the optical size axis, creating a low contrast, strongly readable old style typeface family, with a reduced weight set, oriented for long body copy typesetting. The final result is a superfamily of 41 weights, covering the design space with an expanded charset of over nine hundred glyphs, with full coverage of over two hundred languages using latin and cyrillic alphabets. All the weights of Arsenica come with a full set of open type features allowing to explore its vintage-inspired visual inventions thanks to stylistic sets, discretionary ligatures, contestual alternates and positional numbers. Two variable typefaces are included in the full family, allowing you to explore the design space and precisely control not only the weight but also the optical size design variations.

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mariachiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique is an evolution of the original design by Zetafonts for Lovelace, that challenges its romantic curves with the glitchty & fluid aestethic of transmodern neo-brutalist typography. The seductive "evil serif" look of the Pheimester-like Oldstyle letter shapes is made edgier by the quirky connections and unexpected calligraphic twirls that marry [...] Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mariachiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique is an evolution of the original design by Zetafonts for Lovelace, that challenges its romantic curves with the glitchty & fluid aestethic of transmodern neo-brutalist typography. The seductive "evil serif" look of the Pheimester-like Oldstyle letter shapes is made edgier by the quirky connections and unexpected calligraphic twirls that marry digital distortions to traditional penmanship. Sensuous but sharp, Erotique speaks the language of teasing, and unrequited love, over-the-top and restrained like a show of japanese Kinbaku, and beautifully heartbreaking like a friendzone valentine.  Designed for display use, this high-contrast serif typeface is ready to take center stage in projects where a subtle elegance and an edgy, aggressive touch are required. For branding use it is paired by a Erotique Ornaments, a set of interlocking patterns based on the font letter-shapes, allowing for striking packaging, digital and ambient design. For editorial use it can add a sharp sensuality to logos and titles thanks to an impressive array of alternate glyphs, subtle ligatures and a set of whiplike fleurons, collected in the Erotique Flourishes pack. The typeface has been developed in the regular, medium and bold weight plus a monoline version, all of which have been paired with an Alternate version to give immediate access the more exotic alternate letterforms.  With a character set of over five hundred glyphs, all the the weights of Erotique cover almost 200 languages using extended latin, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Swash and Case Sensitive Forms. If you are a typeface lover, be warned: Erotique could be your fatal attraction!

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Maria Chiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique Sans is the sans serif version of Erotique: a typeface that evolved the original design of Lovelace mixing its romantic curves with the glitchy & fluid aesthetic of trans-modern neo-brutalist typography with the aim of creating a design that was feminine in an assertive and self conscious way. [...] Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Maria Chiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique Sans is the sans serif version of Erotique: a typeface that evolved the original design of Lovelace mixing its romantic curves with the glitchy & fluid aesthetic of trans-modern neo-brutalist typography with the aim of creating a design that was feminine in an assertive and self conscious way. With its restrained, didonesque elegance, Erotique Sans is mostly thought for display use. Its high-contrast design is ready to take center stage in projects where a subtle elegance and an edgy, contemporary touch are required. All its weights (regular, medium, bold and monoline) have been paired with an Alternate version to give immediate access to a wide array of exotic alternate letterforms, available as Open Type Stylistic Sets in the standard family. For logo design and titling use Erotique Sans is paired by Erotique Flourishes, a set of whiplike fleurons that can not only be added to some letters, but also be used as interlocking patterns. For editorial use, since its high contrast requires big text size, the family is complemented by the Erotique Text weight that allows for longer text typesetting thanks to streamlined design, lower contrast and better readability. With a character set of over 500 glyphs, all the the weights of Erotique cover almost 200 languages using extended latin, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates,  Standard  and  Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Swash and Case Sensitive Forms. If you liked Erotique, you won't be able to avoid falling in love with Erotique Sans - the font that can't keep its serifs on... 

In 1459, while visiting his dying mother, italian painter Piero della Francesca spent seven days creating a fresco of a pregnant madonna in a small country church in the hilltown of Monterchi (Italy). Hailed today as one of the masterpieces of Italian Renaissance, the fresco was given a new branding in 2019 by Art Director Riccardo Falcinelli who asked the Zetafonts team to develop a custom font for the project.The resulting typeface system, [...] In 1459, while visiting his dying mother, italian painter Piero della Francesca spent seven days creating a fresco of a pregnant madonna in a small country church in the hilltown of Monterchi (Italy). Hailed today as one of the masterpieces of Italian Renaissance, the fresco was given a new branding in 2019 by Art Director Riccardo Falcinelli who asked the Zetafonts team to develop a custom font for the project.The resulting typeface system, designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini together with Andrea Tartarelli and Maria Chiara Fantini as a rework of Francesco Canovaro original Beatrix Antiqua, is a 50-weights ode to the beauty of classical roman letterforms, that pairs elegant alternates and quirky ligatures with an array of design options for clear and effective editorial, signage, logo and wayfinding design. The base display family, Monterchi, allows endless design expressions with a range of six weights from the slender thin to the strong extrabold, all with matching italics and an array of over one hundred discretionary ligatures. A fine-tuned companion Monterchi Text has been developed to excel in body use, with a larger x-height and wider spacing - clear and legible even at small sizes. The use range of the family is enriched by Monterchi Serif and Monterchi Sans that feature different contemporary interpretations of the same classical geometric skeleton, allowing for layered editorial design and variation. All the fifty fonts in the Monterchi Type System feature an extended character set of over 1100 glyphs covering over 200 languages using the Latin alphabet, as well as Greek and Russian Cyrillic. Open Type features include small caps, positional figures, alternate letterforms, stylistic sets and discretionary ligatures. With his elegant, historical aesthetic, Monterchi embodies the spirit of early Renaissance and the humanist obsession with constructed and geometric beauty - still managing to function as a workhorse family, ready to help any designer in need of a timeless classic look, or looking for the right ligature to transform a simple word into a striking wordmark.

Designed by Mario De Libero, Quark typeface takes the principles of flat nib calligraphy and mixes them with bold typographic expermentation. It blends serif sophistication and digital aesthetics, with its unique identity stemming from the letters' peculiar inner space, that transforms along the weight axis. Mixing traditional translation details with a contemporary serif structure, Quark aims for timelessness through a fusion of forms, where tradition and modernity harmoniously coexist.

Mario De Libero designed Swanstone while investigating XIX Century Old Style typefaces. Designs like Theophile Beaudoire’s Romana (1860) or Miller & Richard’s Modernized Old Style, that re-imagined the classical “Venetian” letterforms adding flared serifs and early Art Nouveau influences. In Italy, one of these fonts was Raffaello Bertieri’s Raffaello, which De Libero used as the starting point of his research in a contemporary [...] Mario De Libero designed Swanstone while investigating XIX Century Old Style typefaces. Designs like Theophile Beaudoire’s Romana (1860) or Miller & Richard’s Modernized Old Style, that re-imagined the classical “Venetian” letterforms adding flared serifs and early Art Nouveau influences. In Italy, one of these fonts was Raffaello Bertieri’s Raffaello, which De Libero used as the starting point of his research in a contemporary retelling of these exuberant and sexily unsettling letterforms. Developed as a single weight to be released in our Zetafonts Singularity line, Swanstone will be available for a limited time as a gift to all subscribers of Zetafonts Type Club. Don’t forget checking our next newsletters!