Grotesque
Forme Grotesque, by Jeremy Johnson, explores the richness of the 19th century British Grotesque genre. The design draws on inspiration from a number of British type foundries, including Grotesques from Stephenson Blake, Monotype and Miller & Richard.
Johnson looked at particular idiosyncrasies and the imperfections of these early typefaces, attempting to put these through a contemporary lens, whilst retaining a nuanced spirit throughout an extensive type family across a wide range of weights, and over multi language writing systems.
Forme Grotesque is available in eight weights — ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold and Black — with corresponding Italics. It is available to license in three flavours; Standard (‘STD’), Professional (‘PRO’) and Arabic (‘ARABIC’). The PRO variant contains language support for Cyrillic and Greek scripts, alongside numerous OpenType features such as old-style numerals, case sensitive forms and stylistic alternates, as well as a set of emojis.
Release
2022
Expanded Family
Forme Grotesque Arabic
Designer
Jeremy Johnson
Version
1.001
Specimen
Forme Grotesque
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
George Chambers
John Haddon & Co.
J. H. King & Co.
William Henry Muggleton
Universal Typecasting Co.
Printers' Type Foundry Ltd
Yendall & Co.
731/2
168
199
206
252
271
326
c.1785 – 98 (15)
Steven Shanks & Son Ltd, formed by merger in 1933 of the foundry of R. H. Stevens (a grandson of Vincent Figgins I) with P. M. Shanks and Co. and, by the time it moved to Coleman Fields in 1971, one of the last two surviving old English letter foundries. The Foundy's materials, notably the Figgins punches and matrices, are preserved by The St Bride Printing Library.
Richard Watts, 1816 – 44, suceeded by his W. M. Watts, whose oriental and other exotic typefaces descended through Gilbert & Rivington to Messrs Clowes & Sons.