SAPORE - IT MEANS FLAVOUR
A TYPE DESIGN AND FONT ENGINEERING PROJECT
I have a sweet tooth, a love for calligraphy, letterforms of all sorts really, and my hometown, Venice. So when I decided it was finally time to make a font, It felt natural to pay tribute to the sign of one of my favourite Pastriccerias in town (a pastry shop), which was made in the 1920s and boasts a gorgeous cursive script that looks very italian.
The font in action
THE SIGN
This is the original hand-painted sign made in the 1920s, just gorgeous!
THE SECOND COMING
In the 1990s the shop was sold to the Rosa Salva family, who luckily kept the place intact and also added a gelateria. They decided to have an additional sign made, in the same style of the original, well, kind of, there are little differences that a letter-maniac will notice.
The letters are less slanted, the counters have a little opening and the capital letters have a different structure.
This is all good but I have to make decisions on what to keep and what to discard!
This is all good but I have to make decisions on what to keep and what to discard!
Comparing the same word that appears in both signs
OTHER REFERENCES
I had other cursive signs in town to help me create the whole alphabet
An m! Thank farmacia Dr.Chiaro for this.
LET'S GET MY HANDS DIRTY
I started sketching with pen and ink, because I am quicker that way and it is a lot of fun.
Here I started to make my ideas about the lower case and the upper case that would go with it. I originally thought to keep the open counters, but then I added an open type feature to make that a choice of the user.
THINGS START TO GET COMPLICATED
Then I realised that maybe there would be all caps words, and so I would need another set of capitals. Normally this would be a separate font, but thanks to the wonders of open type, I could code that into the same file.
No funky business with all swashy caps on my watch!
I actually saw this sign after the sketches below, but it confirmed my ideas, I think the tone is there
NUMBERS
Of course you need them. I eventually put two sets, old style, to be used with the lower case, and lining, to be used with the stand alone capitals.
From the farmacia sign
Old style figures
TO LOOP OR NOT TO LOOP
There are some stylistic sets in the font, available via open-type, one is to make some capitals more like those on the 90s sign, which were more loopy for some reasons.
IT AIN'T OVER TILL IT'S OVER
When the font was done I prepared some graphics for myfonts.com
here are some.
Introducing you Sapore
The combo
The texture
This is another stylistic set, swashy caps for all caps words. But they can also be used with the lower case.
The capital texture
The family
The round version
The calligraphic version
More calligraphic swag
AND THIS IS IT
If you have come this far, I hope you liked the project, thank you for the ride,
and you can find the font here
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/fonderia-serena/sapore/
