Untitled Case

Started from one Excoffon letter, then abandoned it

Arlette is a gestural sans serif family designed by Pilar Cano and Ferran Milan, released by TypeTogether in 2018. The design originated from a single letterform in a Roger Excoffon family before the designers abandoned that reference in favour of independent experimentation. The family spans eight weights with italics in Latin script and six weights in Thai, with the Thai version featuring characters informed by palm leaf manuscripts and Latin numerals adapted to Thai script height. OpenType features include swashes, swash ligatures, arrows, pointers, and multiple numeral sets across both scripts.

Set in Arlette

Insights

The Thai component includes contextual kerning specifically to prevent diacritic mark clashes.
Latin numerals were redrawn to match Thai script height to reflect their common use in Thailand.
The family received the Print Typography & Lettering Awards in 2016 and appeared in Yearbook of Type IV in 2019.