Typeface Design for PP Writer
Three cuts, nine weights, one Renaissance revival
PP Writer is a serif family rooted in French Renaissance letterforms of the 16th century. It offers three cuts—Text, Display, and Italic—each in nine weights, with 744 glyphs per font including alternates and ornaments. The Text cut targets 6–14pt setting; the Display cut amplifies contrast and sharpens strokes for larger sizes. Cyrillic support follows its own traditions rather than mapping Latin conventions onto non-Latin letterforms.
Set in PP Writer
Insights
- Text and Display cuts are differentiated by deliberately varying contrast levels and stroke sharpness, not by simple scaling.
- Cyrillic serifs on characters like Tse and Sha follow Cyrillic tradition, explicitly departing from the Latin model.
- The italic is designed to harmonise with the upright in running text while retaining enough distinction to function as emphasis.
- Heavier weights are described as conveying a sense of ink spread, particularly in the italics.
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