×
I LOVE TYPOGRAPHY

Fonts in Focus: Palast

Hannes von Döhren, award-winning designer of the expansive Brandon superfamily, has teamed up with Bernd Volmer to produce yet another typographic hit with the release of the splendid Palast superfamily. Typically, palaces are full of riches, and HvD’s Palast, from the German word for palace, is a veritable treasure trove.

What’s it good for? Palast is designed to run the gamut from comfortable to read long-form text right through to slap-in-the-face display letters designed to turn heads.

Favorite details: asymmetric angled and bracketed head serifs on ascenders (in letters like b, d, h, k) are subtle and unassuming at small sizes, but jostle for the limelight when writ large and bold.

Palast’s versatility is amped up by the design of three families or optical* sizes: A lower contrast Palast Text version for, well, text; Palast Display for headlines; and Palast Poster, sporting the most contrast, and ideal for the largest sizes. Each of the three families comes in 12 fonts (6 weights with italics).

optical is type design’s way of saying: ‘designed for display at different sizes’

Favorite glyphs: e (for the counter shape), italic t and w; R, especially in the heavier weights; and the numeral 3. As an added bonus, Palast comes with a fine set of geometric ornaments that can be used standalone or in combination to make rather cool borders or dividers.

Although you might want to get the entire superfamily for a big editorial design project, Palast Text is ideally suited to use on the web — webfonts also available.

A graceful, elegant and versatile typeface, Palast is a welcome and distiguished addition to anyone’s font library.

previous: Making your font wishes come true

next: The Year in Type