Serif Typeface for Fontwerk

A Granjon revival five centuries in the making

Romaine is a serif revival by Aad van Dommelen, based on a typeface by sixteenth-century punch-cutter Robert Granjon. Van Dommelen, a veteran Creative Director whose custom corporate typefaces became widespread in South Korea, developed Romaine between 2015 and 2020, with Fontwerk releasing it in July 2020 and adding variable font support in 2022. It is his second retail typeface, following FF Aad (2012). The family ships in four styles with a single weight axis in variable format.

Set in Romaine

Insights

Design period spans 1570 (Granjon source) and 2015–2020 (van Dommelen's development), reflecting the dual historical and contemporary timeline of the revival.
Variable font support was added in a February 2022 update, separate from the 2020 static release; the family exposes a single weight axis.
The italic woff2 file is 279 KB versus 84 KB for the upright, as listed in the technical specifications.
Van Dommelen trained under Gerrit Noordzij at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, a lineage shared with several other Fontwerk designers.