Lecce Sans is a geometric display typeface. This project began last year in Lecce Italy while traveling. The typeface is inspired by typography found in the south of italy. This project is currently a work in progress and the font itself is being designed in collaboration with former classmate Sam Daniels. So far we have a concrete understanding of all the character widths, counters, and terminals. Having studied typeface design in great detail while completing my thesis in 2022 I now have a firm understanding and love for typography and recently have begun designing typefaces and illustrations featuring custom lettering.
Hopefully in due time this typeface will have multiple weights in both upper and lower case. The purpose of the angles on some of the characters such as the ‘C’ and the ‘S’ is to create more space around the character. This allows the characters to sit closer together without seeming overcrowded.
The first volume of Lecce sans was constructed with all of the vertical and horizontal strokes at 10mm while strokes at any three of the angles used in the typeface are slightly thicker in order to seem more aesthetically pleasing. Most of the characters are the same width while characters such as ‘I’ ‘1’ and ‘L’ are slightly more narrow. Initially I was trying to avoid this and make the typeface mono spaced but I came to the conclusion there was too much space around some of these characters. This might also reduce the appearance of rivers in text. Constructing glyphs such as the hash tag and the ampersand were a little challenging as the font is quite robust.
The typeface is designed to reduce to small point sizes and retain its legibility. The counters are large enough and in proportion to the stroke widths to create a dynamic character that reduces well. The lower case will be constructed with a large x-heightso that it is cohesive to the amount of space created with the upper case counters.
