Faber Serif & Faber Sans
Two coordinated fonts,
one harmonious font family
for all kinds of applications
Faber Sans is a sans serif in the style of the classic modern typefaces of the early 20th century — Paul Renner’s Futura and Gill Sans were the inspiration.
The result is a font with pleasantly rhythmic proportions that is extremely pleasant to read, especially in large amounts of text, but it is also easy to read under the typographically adverse conditions of the screen.
Faber Serif is the Roman typeface
which was born out of the sans serif design
Faber Sans. The proportions are nearly
identical to those of Faber Sans.
In comparison, Faber Serif has heavy
— although very short — serifs.
The character of contrasting strokes is
not very pronounced; therefore, this font
is closely related to the first Roman
typefaces from the 15th century.
for example Faber Serif
The determining element in
the appearance is seen in the wide round forms of b c d e o p q and C D G O Q , and this formal characteristic is even more emphasized with the use of the round a and g of the stylistic alternates.
Contrast to the soft round forms is provided by the points of all characters derived from the triangle: v w z, and especially the capitals A M N V W Z .
for example Faber Sans
A terse character is the f, having
a shortened ascender and managing without the usual sweeping bow
in reading order.
A ”second“ typeface with its own personal character resulted as stylistic alternates were designed for the letters a f g l t u in accordance with the uncial scripts of the late antiquity or rather the early Middle Ages. And the r is given a playful point in the stylistic alternates.
Unlike classic sans serifs, Faber Sans includes a ”true“ italic. The italic characters are not simply just slanted variations of the upright, but the characters originated out of handwriting styles; they are rounder and the stroke flow is more fluent than on the upright letters.
Some italic letters truly have their very own design which clearly comes from handwriting, particularly noticeable on a and g.
Several OpenType-Features are included in Faber Sans,
which can be turned on and off as required:
Stylistic alternates
replaces the letters a, f, g, l, r by the alternate glyph, also in ligatures.
Ligatures
replaces the letter combinations fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl, ft, tt, Th with the corresponding ligature.
Discretionary Ligatures
replaces ch, ck, mm with the appropriate ligature and SS with capital-ß.
Tabular figures
replaces proportional standard figures with tabular non-proportional figures.
Medieval figures
replaces standard figures with medieval figures, which have ascenders and descenders like the lowercase letters.
Fractions
replaces the glyph combinations 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 etc. with the according fractions.
Slashed zero
replaces the normal »open« 0 with a slashed zero.
Small Caps
replaces uppercase letters with small capitals at the optical height of x.
Stylistic set 1
replaces the numbers 1 through 20 with circled numbers.
Stylistic set 2
replaces the standard figures 1 through 20 with negative circled numbers.
Stykistic set 3
replaces the »two-story« a with the »round« alternate.
Stylistic set 4
replaces the »two-story« g with the »round« alternate.
Stylistic set 5
replaces the »standard« f with the alternate glyph.
Stylistic set 6
replaces the »straight« l with the alternate form »with a hook«.
Stylistic set 7
replaces the »standard« r with the playful »dotted« alternate.
Stylistic set 8
replaces the u with downstoke with the symmetrical alternate.
Historical forms
replaces s with „long s“.
