Guirnalda
From funeral pamphlet to editorial workhorse
Guirnalda is a slab serif family designed by Ale Grau for long-form reading, with particular attention to rhythm, texture, and small-size performance. Its design origin is an 1880 pamphlet, Guirnalda fúnebre, whose unusually wide-serifed display characters posed the central question: how wide can letterforms be while still flowing rhythmically through dense text? Released in 2026, the family spans 6 weights with matching italics and includes ligatures, stylistic alternates, small caps, and ornaments.
Set in Guirnalda
Insights
- The design was framed around a single constraint derived from a historical source: testing the upper limit of letter width within readable text rhythm.
- The 1880 source material was display-only; the central design question was whether that distinctive width could function in dense text settings.
- Six weights with matching italics align with the stated intended uses of newspapers, magazines, and books.
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