Industry: Design

Typeface Design for Multilingual Printed Text

Intentional imperfection as a design method

Maiola is a text serif designed by Veronika Burian and published by TypeTogether in 2010, drawing on early Czech type design. The family balances legibility with expressive personality through a humanist axis, modest stroke contrast, and pen-formed terminals. It offers six styles across Latin, with separate Cyrillic and polytonic Greek extensions; the Greek was contributed by Irene Vlachou.

Set in Maiola

Insights

Purposeful micro-irregularities—asymmetrical foot serifs, angled curves, and slightly varied stroke weights—were introduced to evoke an etched rather than digitally constructed quality.
The italic increases stroke contrast and angularity beyond the roman, and offers alternate capitals to extend tonal range while preserving overall dynamism.
The family received multiple awards listed between 2004 and 2010, including TDC Judge's Choice (2004) and Granshan First Place (2008).
OpenType features include small capitals, standard and discretionary ligatures, multiple stylistic sets, case-sensitive forms, lining and tabular figures, fractions, ordinals, superscript, and subscript.