Typeface Design for Lineto
A psychedelic Caslon lineage, reappropriated once more
LL Capital is a display serif designed by Pablo Desportes and published by Lineto in 2025, with font engineering and mastering by Alphabet, Berlin. It revisits the 1970s NYC tradition of Caslon reappropriations—drawing especially on ITC Grouch—and adds another layer of reinterpretation. Desportes first drew Grouch-style letterforms in 2022 for the title sequence of Neels Castillon's short film 'Whale's Song', then pursued a balance between extreme contrast and screen functionality. The result is a characterful titling face that also performs at smaller sizes.
Set in LL Capital
Insights
- Desportes reduced the extreme stroke contrast of ITC Grouch after finding the original level impractical for screen use, making contrast calibration the central design challenge.
- The italic adopts an 18° slant angle, chosen to evoke 1970s display faces; Desportes applied a systematic slanting approach rather than adjusting individual letterforms.
- Among the ITC Caslons referenced, only No. 224 included italics—and it was a body-text face—leaving Desportes without a display-oriented italic model to draw from.
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