Based in Florence, Italy, Zetafonts is a type foundry that’s been crafting some of the most innovative and unique type designs available on the retail market for well over a decade. Founded by Debora Manetti, Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini, and Francesco Canovaro, this foundry specializes in typography that will withstand the test of time.
When it comes to any new design, form must always meet function. Zetafonts recognizes that while design trends come and go, there are certain elements of style that never really fall out of favor. They consistently manage to strike an artistic balance that breathes unique character into every letter set, while maintaining a timeless quality that ensures the work will be relevant today, tomorrow, and ten years from now.
Zetafonts’ work generally falls squarely in the middle between body text and display typography because, having backgrounds in graphic design themselves, they understand that flexibility is absolutely paramount. They’re committed to crafting type designs that are beautiful on the surface, but exceedingly versatile and functional behind the scenes.
Working with international clients, Zetafonts’ type designs provide plenty of OpenType and multilingual support so designers around the globe can make the most of their projects. Over the years since it was established, the foundry has worked with a growing number of designers and typographers to expand their portfolio of work.
Even though their list of associates has grown, the founders of Zetafonts still play a hands-on role in the foundry and they’re always working on new projects together. One of Zetafonts’ most recent releases is Klein, designed by Francesco Canovaro, Cosimo Pancini, and Andrea Tartarelli.
“Klein is Zetafonts’ love letter to the grandmother of all geometric sans typefaces, Futura,” they said. What began as an exploration of Paul Renner’s original letterforms would eventually part ways from the iconic design, at least in some respects. Francesco and Andrea preferred more humanist and grotesque characteristics over Futura’s distinct modernism and the resulting type family evokes some of the softness of traditional humanist sans serifs like Gill Sans.
Contemporary and avant-garde, the type design’s name pays homage to Yves Klein, a midcentury French artist and composer who was part of the Nouveau Réalisme movement and a true artistic pioneer. Even the type design’s preview artwork nods toward some of the artist’s most well known pieces through the use of blue as a focal point. (Klein, the artist, crafted his signature blue by suspending ultramarine pigment in matte synthetic resin binder to maintain the color’s brilliance, creating a unique and intense hue that would later be known as International Klein Blue.)
Klein carries a subtle warmth through its architecture, although it speaks with a confident authority. This contemporary sans serif offers stellar legibility, even in small point, so it’s a fantastic option for business cards, fine print, package insert details, labels, and mobile applications.
The entire Klein family is comprised of 54 fonts in total, offering Regular, Text, and Condensed widths. The original version is geared toward display use, while the Text variation offers more comfortable readability due to its slightly higher x-height. Where space limitations are concerned, Condensed will make the most of limited horizontal space, particularly as display text in editorial or advertising formats.
Each of the three widths is available in Thin, Extralight, Light, Book, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extrabold, and Black, with corresponding italics for each weight. With excellent clarity, Klein is perfectly suited for everything from long-form body text, publishing, headlines, editorials, web copy, advertising, logos, letterhead, corporate communications, marketing materials, product packaging, presentations, infographics, and any project that needs a fresh and modern sans serif. The range of weights and widths makes this family an excellent choice for branding and identity projects that require fluid design cohesion across multiple media types and sizes.
As with most of Zetafonts’ typical work, Klein is absolutely loaded with additional features through OpenType, including capitals to small caps, case sensitive forms, fractions, standard ligatures, discretionary ligatures, alternate annotation, ordinals, scientific inferiors, subscript, superscript, old style figures, tabular figures, slashed zero, small caps, and titling alternates for incredible versatility. Its multilingual support is extensive as well, covering Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, Dutch, Igbo Onwu, Basic Greek, and Basic Cyrillic for graphic design projects aimed at a global audience.
Zetafonts currently offers 57 products through YouWorkForThem, featuring an array of serifs, sans serifs, unique display fonts and gorgeous scripts for design projects of all kinds. Visit their portfolio to take a look at the rest of their work and check back often to catch their newest releases!