So with Vista he experimented with adding the curves in slightly unusual places such as some of the stroke endings. It’s not easy to add subtle curves to a sans design because without serifs there are fewer areas where one can introduce curved details. As a result, his type designs were always very curvy and smooth, perhaps too much so, but it’s something he enjoyed. When he was studying type design at Scriptorium de Toulouse, Dupré drew type calligraphically by hand on tracing paper without a ruler. For example, the elegant, slightly bulging edge on some of the stroke endings. There are many subtle details in Vista that become interesting at large sizes. The form and the rhythm of Vista are a blend of blackletter and humanist writing. He combined these features with more humanist shapes to make a well-working text font. While drawing these early forms he was also inspired by blackletter types, particularly their contrast, emphasis on the vertical, and strong graphic look and feel. Together with the lower case g they are the most difficult characters to design. The a, always a favorite of Dupré, became the most characteristic letter, setting the tone for the typeface. It also makes the lighter weights more legible when setting long texts at small sizes, while the Black weight, which is more appropriate for titling, is given more impact with the tighter spacing. This type of spacing emphasizes the lightness and blackness of the respective weights. The text weights are loosely spaced while the bold and black are spaced more tightly. He was inspired by Erik Spiekerman’s FF Meta, which succeeds at combining the humanist appeal of calligraphic forms with the pragmatic simplicity of the sans.Īfter a number of false starts, in May of 2004, Dupré arrived at the right proportions for a text font that was not too condensed to preserve comfort in reading, and not too wide for economy of space. In reaction to this, Dupré set out to design a semi-serif typeface that would retain some of these animated characteristics, while being useful enough for more general text applications. Most of the shop signs in Sumatra that caught his eye featured wildly idiosyncratic hand lettering, often with extreme slab- and triangular serifs (probably inspired by Western Americana), and other unusual shapes. The concept for Vista began in July of 2002, when Dupré sketched a few characters in a notebook while staying in Sumatra on holiday.
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