Industry: Design

Typography for Jabana

Three alternates per glyph, randomised by OpenType

Jabana is a handwritten marker typeface designed by Nils Thomsen in 2014, inspired by Hamburg's coffee bar culture. The family spans 20 styles across 4 weights and 5 widths (Compressed to Extended), with 1,500 glyphs per font. Three alternates exist for every letter, numeral, and punctuation mark, deployed via Contextual Alternates to give text a lively, handwritten appearance. Companion subfamilies Jabana Alt and Jabana Extras extend the system with more conventional forms and a dingbat set of icons, banners, and ornaments.

Set in Jabana, Jabana Alt, Jabana Extras

Insights

Contextual Alternates automatically cycle through three glyph variants per character to give text a lively, handwritten appearance; alternates are also manually accessible via ss01–ss03.
The family includes 20 stylistic sets covering decorative features such as Black Ball Figures, Roman Numerals up to 39, centered punctuation, eight bullet alternates, and two arrow sets.
Jabana Alt is offered as a more restrained companion with a larger x-height and shorter descenders for contexts where the primary family reads as too expressive.
Jabana Extras comprises 12 ornamental fonts including café and bar icons, catchwords, banner sets, arrows, dividers, and ornaments.