Typeface Design for Yuni Slab
Wood-type heritage meets high-contrast serif tension
Yuni Slab is a compressed slab serif designed by Philipp Neumeyer at TypeMates in 2022, drawing loosely on historical wood-type models including Clarendon, Ionic, and Franklin Type Foundry's Antique Condensed. Its character combines chunky serifs, ball terminals, and naive serif distribution with structural tension borrowed from high-contrast serifs, partly referencing the Romain du Roi. The family ships in six weights—Hair through Black—as a variable font, with over 900 glyphs per style covering more than 270 languages across Latin and native-approved Cyrillic scripts.
Set in Yuni Slab
Insights
- Serif distribution draws partial inspiration from the 17th-century Romain du Roi while simultaneously referencing compressed wood-type genres.
- Structural contrast is intentionally borrowed from the high-contrast serif—the formal opposite of a slab—creating internal tension in the design.
- Development included consulting help from Daria Cohen, Ilya Ruderman, and Yury Ostromentsky; stylistic sets cover Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian Cyrillic alternates separately.
- Yuni Slab is described as one part of a larger type system planned for future release.
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