Keratine is a typeface exploring the space between fraktur and antiqua letterforms through the lens of low resolution digital aesthetics.
Keratine's variable identity design is based on internal contradictions as letterforms change dynamically with weight.
pixel fraktur
Keratine Light
Keratine Light Italic
Keratine Book
Keratine Book Italic
Keratine Regular
Keratine Italic
Keratine Semibold
Keratine Semibold Italic
Keratine Bold
Keratine Bold Italic
Keratine Extrabold
Keratine Extrabold Italic
Keratine Heavy
Keratine Heavy Italic
Keratine Black
Keratine Black Italic
The letterforms that we now accept as the historical standard for printing latin alphabets were developed in Italy around the end of 1400. Deriving from Roman capitals and from italic handwriting, they soon replaced the blackletter letterforms that were used a few years before by Gutenberg for his first moveable types. Between these two typographical traditions there's an interesting and obscure middleground of historical oddballs, like the Pannartz-Sweynheym Subiaco types, cut in Italy in 1462.
Keratine is the result of Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini's exploration of that territory. Like our Kitsch by Francesco Canovaro it explores the impossible territory between antiqua and blackletter, not as a mere historical research, but rather as a way to re-discover and empower an unexpected and contemporary dynamism. Using contemporary digital aesthetics to combine the proportions of humanistic type with the gestural energy of Fraktur letterforms, Keratine developes a "digitally carved", quasi-pixelated appearance (clearly stressed in Keratine's italics) that allows an unexpected balance between small-size readability and display-size personality.
Keratine also relies heavily on a variable identity as the letterforms change dynamically with weight, developing from a contrasted, text-oriented light range to more expressive and darker display range, for a total of 8 weights with italics. Open type features and glyph alternates further enrich the usage possibility of this typeface that embodies our contemporary swap culture by embracing the contradictory complexity at the crossroads between Gothic and Humanist styles, while playfully empathising with a digital, brutalist spirit.
Features
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12360Oldstyle Figures
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Awaygothic letterforms
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Mamansingle story a
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Gaggingsingle story c
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Horroralternate r
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THIEFmedieval letterforms
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yoyoalternate y
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C&Galternate ampersand
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237alternate numbers
Variable Typefaces
Keratine Variable
VARIABLE FONTS ARE ONLY AVAILABLE WITH THE FULL FAMILY PACKAGE, MAY NOT WORK WITH ALL THE SOFTWARE
Pannartz & Sweynheym
Type design is mostly re-inventing something that both is already there and has never existed.
The Subiaco Press was a printing press located in Subiaco, Italy. The Press was established in 1464 by the German monks Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim in the Abbey of Santa Scolastica, Subiaco. Sweynheim had worked with Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the mechanical movable-type printing press. Making use of the invention, Subiaco Press was the first printing press in Italy. The first book printed at Subiaco was a work by 4th century writer Aelius Donatus; it has not been preserved. This was followed by Cicero's 1st century BC work De Oratore, printed at Subiaco in September 1465, a copy of which is preserved in the Buchgewerbehaus at Leipzig. The next book was the Lactantius 4th century work The Divine Institutes, printed in October 1465. In 1467, Augustine of Hippo's 5th century The City of God was printed. These early books are notable for their typography. Unlike earlier German books, they were not printed in blackletter type. Instead, they were printed in a "half Roman" type, as in Italy there was a desire to use Roman characters. Furthermore, Lactantius's The Divine Institutes contains the world's first Greek printed characters. These were used for the extensive quotations in Greek which employed mobile letters now called "Subiaco type". In 1467, Pannartz and Sweinheim left Subiaco and settled in Rome.
