The open round forms of many of the letters provide the most striking characteristic of JOSEF, causing the typeface to appear gentle and pleasing.

All of the letters are recognizably narrow, almost ”condensed,“ the forms being very functionally shaped. The construction of the ”triangular“ upper case letters A M N V W as well as v and w, especially catches the eye with the shafts joined together as beams are stacked upon each other. With this construction JOSEF displays a down-to-earth touch.

The ”round“ letters emphasize the condensed open oval; the light counter forms provide the rhythm of the typeface, the ”modern“ design of a and g being especially contributive here. Contrary to the classical sans serifs, a few letters were given light echoes of serifs which promote fluency: a d l are displayed below the line in a reading direction and end in a compressed but also very short serif style; on m n p r the upstroke is gently displayed and on u the downstroke.

For all the typo-maniacs among you designers there are alternative forms for a number of letters in Josef: A B D G I M N R W and a d f g j l ß u. Even an antiquated ”long“ s and an upper case ß is available.

Plus, Josef includes numerous ligatures which can save that little bit of space where required and which allow the typeface to appear more variable: ch, ck, ct, fi, fj, fl, ff, ffi, ffl, ft, mm, ti, tt, tz.

All additional functions can be activated and deactivated as OpenType-Features:

Stylistic Alternates: replaces the letters A, B, D, G, I, M, N, R, W, a, d, f, g, j, l, ß, u in each case with the alternative variant.

Ligatures: replaces the letter pairs ct, fi, fj, fl, ff, ffi, ffl, ft, ti, tt, tz with the respective letter combination.

Discretional Ligatures: replaces the letter pairs ch, ck, mm with the respective letter combination and SS, SZ with capital-ß.

Tabular Numbers: replaces the normal numbers by means of tabular numbers with identical sign width.

Historical Forms: replaces s with ”long s“ and SS i.e., SZ with capital-ß.