Industry: Design

Typeface Design for the Soleil Font Family

Geometric rigour softened by optical correction

Soleil is a geometric sans serif family designed by Wolfgang Homola and published by TypeTogether in 2011. Rather than relying on pure geometric construction, the design introduces optical corrections—asymmetrical counters, a purposefully drawn italic, and a large x-height—to add legibility and warmth to an otherwise rational skeleton. The family spans seven weights with matching italics, variable uprights and italics, and an Escher-inspired display style called Magic Caps. OpenType support covers small caps, oldstyle and lining figures, ligatures, case-sensitive forms, and over 100 Latin-script languages.

Set in Soleil

Insights

Optical corrections include asymmetrical counters and a lowercase 'm' whose second shoulder begins meeting while the first is still curving.
The italic was drawn from scratch rather than generated by slanting the upright.
Weight-dependent detailing is built in: the slant on the top of the 't' increases as weight grows heavier.
Magic Caps is described as a twisting, two-sided display style—distinct from the text weights rather than a width or optical-size variant.