Industry: Design

Typeface Design for William Subhead

Three optical sizes, each redrawn for its point range

William Subhead is the mid-size optical cut of Typotheque's contemporary Caslon revival, designed for use between 14 and 30 points. The family spans three optical sizes—Text, Subhead, and Display—each adjusted in stroke contrast, letterform proportions, and spacing for its intended size range. The revival extends William Caslon's 18th-century foundry work to Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts, and includes more than 200 ornaments drawn from a review of the original Caslon Foundry's decorative catalogue. Nine numeral variants are included, with proportional old-style figures as the default.

Set in William Subhead

Insights

Optical size differentiation goes beyond stroke contrast: vertical and horizontal proportions and spacing were independently adjusted for each size range.
Maria Doreuli designed all three scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek); Irene Vlachou contributed to the Greek; Roberto Arista handled font engineering.
The ornament set exceeds 200 pieces, curated after reviewing the original Caslon Foundry's catalogue of over 2,600 decorative elements.
Licensees can choose their own default numeral variant from nine available styles, including tabular, small-caps, superior, inferior, and circled figures.