Famous for:
First postscript typeface to extend idea of italic 'superfamily'.
Applications: Religious and Devotional
Ubiquity:
Average use
Category:
Chancery Italic
Stress: Angled
Serifs: Calligraphic
Date: 1992
Designer:
Robert Slimbach
Foundry:
Adobe
Location:
California, USA
Current equivalent:
Adobe Poetica
See also:
Cancellaresca Bastarda by Jan Van Krimpen
Technologies:
Postscript
Design history:
Robert Slimbach's comprehensive attempt at creating a family of interrelated chancery italics. Based around four varying degrees of swash on one underlying italic design, the parts of Poetica's family are numbered 1-4. The full set also contains five types of swash capitals, two sets of alternate lowercase figures, two sets of lowercase terminals, fractions and standard ligatures, ornamental ligatures, one font of analphabetic ornaments and another font entirely of ampersands. The concept seeks to use the postscript technology to make good on the ideas of Jan van Krimpen; the design itself is based on examples of 15th century penmanship that predated the creation of italics as printing typefaces.
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