Industry: Design

Poets Electra for poets.org

Reviving a 1935 typeface for the web—starting from 8pt metal samples

Commercial Type collaborated with Project Projects and the Academy of American Poets to create a custom digital revival of W. A. Dwiggins's 1935 Electra for poets.org. Christian Schwartz drew the screen version from 8pt hot metal samples; Miguel Reyes drew a heavier Roman and Italic for print. The typeface also serves the site's embeddable poem feature, visually linking syndicated content back to the Academy.

Set in Poets Electra, Founders Text

Insights

Schwartz treated Electra as a period artifact rather than attempting to reconstruct Dwiggins's intent, finding this the most appropriate approach for a screen-first revival.
Working from 8pt hot metal specimens rather than the existing 24pt digitization produced a quieter result: counterforms squarer, stems less tapered, terminals less eccentric—changes that paradoxically matched the original small-size feel more closely than prior digitizations.
Linotype duplexing forced roman and italic onto identical widths; Dwiggins designed around this constraint deliberately, unlike many contemporaries whose italics were distorted by the adaptation.
The screen version felt too light on paper, prompting Reyes to draw a slightly heavier Roman and Italic specifically for print use.