Both celebrate the marriage of geometric rationality and elegance. SangBleu took its cues from the Bignon Commission’s models and the types cut by Grandjean. SangBleu OG was a contemporary design inspired by the most exclusive letterforms in history – the Romain du Roi, or King’s Roman, commissioned by Louis XIV in the late 17th century. Lowercase letters like “e”, “i”, “l”, and “s” needed new solutions to fill in their own space without breaking the flow of the script – which is the most important visual aspect of this type of design. That brought a new language to the typeface since each letter would have to occupy the same spacing box. While the final typeface is not completely monopaced, the monospace-style was a way to integrate the mechanical aspect of typography into calligraphy. For Raskal, that was “to make a script font monospace” and channel handwriting’s freedom into small boxes with identical widths. He told himself to add an irrational parameter to the brief, a challenge that seems impossible to solve, something that doesn’t even make sense if you try to define it with words. To force himself toward new and refreshing visual perspectives and to think outside of the box, Rey applied a tactic he had often been pleased to offer students in workshops if they were ever stuck in a creative rut while working on a piece of design. He was even getting feedback that suggested he should abandon his initial desires and finish the typeface as a simple digital reinterpretation of a historical writing style. Aesthetically, the challenge of turning Raskal into a typeface looking like a contemporary script was far from resolved. That sensation forced Rey to reconsider his self-inflicted brief. After working on the script font for four years, he felt like he wasn’t getting anywhere. One determining point in Raskal’s development was Rey’s decision in 2018 to turn it into a monospace-style font. The “e” had taken the form consisting of three horizontal strokes only. That is clear even when looking at the single line from Type Life #1v2 above. By 2018, it also had fewer traditional letter shapes. However, by the time Type Life #1v2 was published in 2018, the typeface’s design had become virtually monospaced. At that time, SB Snakes – the typeface’s working name – was not monospaced yet. Some capital letters look historically familiar, although the alternate forms and ligatures already had a decidedly 21st-century vibe. As you can see above, many of the letterforms still looked like traditional script-style fonts. The magazine included a page printed in an earlier version of Raskal’s design. Swiss Typefaces’ Type Life #2, published in 2017, was about SangBleu (the typeface) and Sang Bleu (the brand). However, most of its glyphs do have the same width. Raskal is not actually a monospaced typeface. Right: The line in TypeLife #1v2 is appears monospaced. Left: Six lines of text were set with a not-yet-monospace font in Swiss Typefaces’ Type Life #2 magazine. Raskal at two earlier stages of its development. To prepare for the next time that a brief called for a script font, Rey wanted to have something to suggest that wasn’t anachronistic. However, relying on a computer to render the elegance of roundhand-style calligraphy is more like historical reenactment than actual history (one can, after all, still write invitations out by hand). It does this through its letterforms’ general appearance and by having many contextual alternates. In the end, Rey used Bickham Script Pro, a digital font that attempts to present text in the style of 18th-century English writing masters. Swiss Typefaces also did not have a script font in its library. Script fonts often function as shorthand for formality, and he had to use one, even though the museum’s corporate design system he had developed didn’t dictate any option. He had designed an exclusive typographic system for the new visual identity of the Kunstmuseum Luzern, and it came time to design an invitation for a gala. In 2012, Rey took the first steps toward what eventually led him into the concept of the Raskal typeface. Invitation card for a donors ’ event at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in 2012, using Bickham Script Pro from Adobe and SangBleu OG from Swiss Typefaces. However, very late in its development, Rey began making quick sketches on paper to help determine how some of its final glyphs might best look. Which might sound an aberration for a typeface inspired by calligraphy. For many years, all its design and form-finding experiments were drawn digitally without resorting to sketches made by hand. Instead, what I mean is that the font’s design process was primarily a digital one. Of course, the font is a digital file for use with digital applications. By saying this, I don’t mean to state the obvious.
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