With apologies to PRINT’s excellent Type Tuesday column—every day is type day for me, especially today. I received the following email and felt compelled to celebrate my ever-so-tiny contribution to a surprising newly christened typeface: Maso, a retro Italian-style display font.
“I often use your book Scripts: Elegant Lettering From Design’s Golden Age for font inspiration,” writes Irish designer Dominic Stanley, “and I was looking for something expressive that could have been drawn by a lettering artist or sign painter.”
The Montresor wine label below stood out for Stanley. “As it emphasized the gap between the down and up strokes, I thought this was a really interesting sign painting effect. So I expanded the character set, played around with different angles and eventually turned the font upright and lost the serifs (though there’s no way Fred Smeijers would classify it as a Sans!). Maso is a different take on a classic style. True to its roots, it works well for branding and packaging and, funnily enough, with Italian words. It’s the second font release through my foundry Stanley Fonts after Liet Display. … With Maso, there are more weights, styles and characters to come. I’m going to expand the font in stages, so this 400-character single style set is $9.99, and anyone who supports it now will receive all updates for free.”