FF Ernestine was born from the search for a versatile monolinear text typeface whose design could encompass seemingly opposite feelings. Its designer Nina Stössinger wanted to develop a solution that would feel warm, but also serious; slightly feminine, but not too swirly-girly – charming and stu...
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FF Ernestine was born from the search for a versatile monolinear text typeface whose design could encompass seemingly opposite feelings. Its designer Nina Stössinger wanted to develop a solution that would feel warm, but also serious; slightly feminine, but not too swirly-girly – charming and sturdy at the same time. The typeface’s rather large x-height and wide, open shapes enable it to work well in small sizes. Ligatures, stylistic and contextual alternates, a selection of arrows, and two sizes of small caps enrich the fonts’ typographic palette.
Stössinger first drew the Roman as a study project at the postgraduate Type Design program in Zürich. The typeface then took a multi-script turn: an Armenian extension was developed together with Hrant Papazian. FF Ernestine is the first typeface in the FontFont library to support Armenian. The “Pro” versions of the typeface include this glyph coverage.
FF Ernestine’s Latin and Armenian base cuts are relatively independent master designs, unified by color and apparent size, as well as by their similar typographic mood. Both are culturally authentic and specifically optimized for their respective script. The Latin Italic acts as a pivot in the family. It shares the vertical proportions of the Latin Roman, and the slant and serif structure of its Armenian sibling. This also has the effect that the Italics are only slightly slanted, and not very cursive in structure; they are differentiated from the Roman also by way of their narrower proportions, different serif structure, and slightly lighter weight. If you’d like to pair Armenian and Latin, the Italic is interesting as an especially close partner to pair with the Armenian. If you don’t, well, it’s the Italic – an Italic which, as it’s not so cursive or slanted as to be distracting, can be rather nice to read for extended passages of text as well.
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