Zetafonts is an internationally known type foundry based in Florence, Italy, that emerged more than a decade ago. Established by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini, Francesco Canovaro, and Debora Manetti, Zetafonts is a source of high-quality type designs that always manage to carry a sense of timelessness. Popular trends change as eras come and go, but no matter what design style they choose to emulate through their work, Zetafonts’ type designs are always fresh and always relevant.
When it comes to their work, artistry consistently meets application. Their designs typically fall somewhere between body text and display type; their goal is to create letter sets that are adaptable to the needs of graphic designers regardless of what they’re working on. The level of flexibility that comes with Zetafonts’ releases is nearly unparalleled; their work relies on maintaining a high degree of innovation and functionality, all wrapped up in a perfect presentation.
Over the years that have passed since it was founded, Zetafonts has collaborated with a number of graphic designers and typographers to create and release beautiful typography that’s been used in design projects around the world.
One of their more recent releases through YouWorkForThem is DoubleBass, a display type that was designed with a cartoonish aesthetic that we like to think of as modern vintage. Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Andrea Tartarelli, DoubleBass is a totally hip design that can’t stop moving and grooving. Its bouncy, visual rhythm lends a sense of movement to its letterforms, as though it’s really digging on some cool, smooth jazz playing in a smoky, underground nightclub somewhere in the 1950s.
The design concept for DoubleBass was inspired by the work of Saul Bass, a graphic and title designer who was known for his radical design concepts, his innovation, and quite frankly, his flamboyance. Considered to be one of the greatest designers of all time, Saul was the hand behind the iconic lettering used in the title sequence of Otto Preminger’s “The Man With The Golden Arm,” and that particular project served as the inspiration for DoubleBass.
The typographers behind this type design wanted to capture the essence of rhythm in visual form, embracing a modular structure that doesn’t rely on a thousand ligatures or alternate characters. Alternating sets of capital letters and numbers ensure that the bouncy up/down rhythm is indeed kept through OpenType ligature substitution that occurs automatically as you type. You don’t have to worry about manual character placement or locating the right version of a character in the stylistic alternates panel because Zetafonts designed this font to do that part for you.
DoubleBass is available in four weights that include Thin, Light, Regular and Bold, giving designers plenty of flexibility in their work. The lighter weights are naturally better suited for small blocks of text or accent information on flyers or playbills, while the heavier weights work beautifully in larger displays, signage, posters, flyers, and even jazz album covers.
Multilingual support extends to Basic Latin, Western European, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Pan African Latin, and Basic Cyrillic for graphic designs and marketing campaigns intended for a global audience.
Zetafonts currently offers 49 products through YouWorkForThem, a varied range of serifs, sans serifs, beautiful scripts and one-of-a-kind display fonts to suit design projects of all kinds. Visit their portfolio to check out the rest of their work and if you love what you find there, bookmark it so you can check back for new releases as they arrive!