Industry: Design

Seance Family

Blackletter revived from an 1835 French specimen

Seance is a two-style blackletter family designed by Tim Ripper, drawn from the ornate lettering of French artist Jean Midolle (1794–?). It adapts Midolle's Fracture Midolline and Gothique Brisée — both published in his 1835 Spécimen des écritures modernes — into functional typefaces. Ripper aimed to retain the eccentric, unsettling character of the original standalone alphabets while making them typographically workable.

Set in Seance

Insights

The family derives from two distinct blackletter styles within a single 1835 source publication, Midolle's Spécimen des écritures modernes.
Ripper treated the originals as standalone alphabets rather than typefaces, requiring adaptation for typographic use while preserving their idiosyncrasies.
The project is part of Commercial Type's Vault, a repository for typefaces with potentially limited character sets.