Industry: Design

Typeface Design for Historical English Lettering

Five styles, five distinct sources from English lettering history — unified by taste, not convention

Designed by Quentin Schmerber and published by TypeTogether in 2018, Temeraire is a five-style serif family rooted in English lettering traditions. Rather than expanding through incremental weight changes, each style draws from a distinct historical source: Transitional serifs, copperplate writing masters, gravestone cutting, and Italiennes. The family is intentionally conspicuous, designed for books, magazines, and large-format print where its stylistic variety rewards attention.

Set in Temeraire

Insights

Family expansion was driven by 18th-century historical research rather than standard weight interpolation, producing styles with divergent stress axes and letterform logic.
The Display Black derives from gravestone cutting, with distinctive details including a re-pressed descending bowl on the 'g' and an additional serif on the 't' crossbar; loopless alternates exist for 'g' and 'Q'.
The Italienne style uses horizontal stress and pushes weight to opposing hemispheres within each glyph, making it a structural counterpoint to the rest of the family.
Temeraire received the Gerard Unger Scholarship in 2016 and was shortlisted for the 7th Club des Directeurs Artistiques the same year.