Industry: Design

Typeface Design for a Romanesque-Inspired Font Family

Doctoral research turned typeface

Alverata is a contemporary serif family by Gerard Unger, rooted in his doctoral research on Romanesque letterforms from 11th- and 12th-century Europe. Short thorn-like serifs, flared strokes, large x-height, slight condensing, and large interior spaces characterise the design. The family ships in three distinct style branches—Regular, Informal, and Irregular—each with its own structural logic rather than simply varying weight. Greek and Cyrillic extensions were developed with Gerry Leonidas, Irene Vlachou, and Tom Grace respectively.

Set in Alverata

Insights

The Irregular style inverts conventional Latin conventions: curved forms shift to uppercase while angular forms move to lowercase, rather than adding weight or a companion sans.
Early 20th-century secondary traits—large x-height, slight condensing, large interior spaces—were incorporated into the Romanesque base but deliberately modified to prevent blandness and imitation.
The Informal style differentiates itself through a single-story 'a' and calligraphic terminals, not through width or weight change.
Greek was developed with Gerry Leonidas (University of Reading) and Irene Vlachou (Athens); Cyrillic with Tom Grace.