Typeface Design for Valentine

Reconstructed from a flea-market typewriter, then checked against Olivetti's original drawings

Designed by Stephan Müller and released by Lineto in 2002, Valentine is a digital reconstruction of the «Quadrato» typeface originally created by Olivetti's Arturo Rolfo in 1962–63 for the bright red Valentine portable typewriter. The revival began from a sample typed on a flea-market machine in Berlin, later verified against original Olivetti drawings supplied by Gian-Maria Capello, at the time Olivetti's last type-production engineer. The family spans six cuts: Light, Regular, and Bold, each with a matching italic. Font engineering and mastering were handled by Alphabet, Berlin.

Set in Valentine

Insights

The source typeface, «Quadrato», was itself inspired by Novarese and Butti's «Mikrogramma», giving the revival a layered typographic lineage.
Verification drew on two separate archival sources: original production drawings supplied personally by Capello, and access to the Olivetti archive held by the Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti in Ivrea.
The Valentine typewriter was equipped with multiple regional type styles (Pica, Elite, Quadrato); only Quadrato was selected as the basis for the digital family.
Rolfo's «Quadrato» predated the Valentine typewriter by several years, having been designed for both mechanical and electrical Olivetti machines before its inclusion in the 1969 product.