Author Archives: Laura Franz

View the web font specimen sheet.

A serif font designed by Mitja Miklavčič and pub­lished by font­font.

I cat­e­go­rize Tisa Web Pro as an “Other Serif” font, because it does not fall neatly into any of the gen­eral his­toric cat­e­gories com­monly used to describe serif type. Accord­ing to Miklavčič, the intent was to “develop a softer, more dynamic ver­sion of a nineteenth-century slab serif wood type.”

Tisa’s almost-slab ser­ifs are slightly tapered, its aper­ture is open and human­ist, its bowls have an implied stress, its x-height is gen­er­ous. The font grace­fully mixes-and-matches var­i­ous his­toric approaches to font design, result­ing in a slightly “square” or “struc­tured” feel­ing font with human­ist qual­i­ties.  The bold is accept­able, but slightly too heavy for my per­sonal preference.

Tisa Web Pro works well cross browser. 4 styles are avail­able via type­kit. The full fam­ily (10 styles, includ­ing a medium weight which is slightly lighter than the bold) is avail­able for licens­ing via fontshop.

View the web font specimen sheet.

A serif font designed by Erik Spiek­er­mann, Chris­t­ian Schwartz, and Kris Sow­ersby. Pub­lished by FontShop.

Meta Serif (for print) was orig­i­nally designed as a com­pan­ion font to Meta. Meta Serif Web Pro is not merely a print font repack­aged for web use—it has been care­fully hinted and looks great on screen.

I clas­sify Meta Serif Web Pro has an “Other Serif” font, because it does not fall neatly into any of the gen­eral his­toric cat­e­gories com­monly used to describe serif type. Ser­ifs look more pen-formed, while ter­mi­nals on the a and f look more drawn. The con­trast between thicks and thins is mod­er­ate, and feels more old-style, but the stress is decid­edly ver­ti­cal and feels tran­si­tional. All of these ele­ments meld grace­fully together to cre­ate a serif font with a slightly “square” or “struc­tured” feel­ing. Meta Serif Web Pro’s x-height is only a hair larger than Georgia’s, but retains read­abil­ity a bit bet­ter at smaller sizes.

Meta Web Pro works cross browser. 4 styles are avail­able via type­kit. A total of 16 styles are avail­able for license directly from FontShop. It also works beau­ti­fully with its com­pan­ion font: Meta Web Pro.