(x) type design • (x) malvasia

malvasia is a bold semi-serif display typeface. the design was inspired by the hand-cut stencil fonts on ancient portwine and madeira-bottles. i worked with this example before in the saramago book project, interpreting it as handlettering. the latin alphabet is almost done, though the lowercase letters and glyphs require some more hours of work. for the annual exhibition i decided to present the font on its original canvas – wine bottles. there are only a few gaps left, that indicate its origin from a stencil font. i intentionally skipped most of the stencil-style, because i like the font to be used for a broader range of cases. the vertical strokes show a slight variation in width. bold serifs on some characters give the font its special and modern appearance. malvasia tends to bend in the direction of reading, especially when it comes to accents and diacritics. this should ease the process of reading but also add a funny twist to the font. it refers to the heritage of sailors and traders, but also of wine – saúde!