Eckhart: An Interview
Eckhart is a modern, high-contrast typeface designed to create elegant, original and expressive designs. It’s a complete type system for many uses, from branding to setting paragraph text. Eckhart is equipped with ligatures, swashes and alternates, along with a decorative style that makes it very distinctive as a display typeface.
What inspired you to design this typeface? Were you designing for a specific use case or customer? Or were you more focused on a particular artistic vision? Or some combination of both?
The main idea behind the Eckhart family was to design a typeface for fashion and beauty magazines and advertising. The design process was driven purely by artistic vision of a playful Didone type family with humanist axis — elegant yet dynamic at the same time.
Walk us through the process of designing this typeface. Was there anything different about it, compared to your usual process? Did it come along more easily than others, or were there unique challenges?
Eckhart’s design process was similar to my other fonts. First came the general idea coupled with the future purpose of the final design. Next, I worked on the first letter sketches and the main characteristics of the family, having in mind that the bold weights would be of the greatest importance for this particular project given its display character. Afterwards, I created the whole alphabet — lots of adjusting and testing were involved here to get the proportions perfect for what I imagined Eckhart to be. The idea of adding a color font variant was born at this stage. After seeing the outcome, it was natural and obvious to have an even more playful and organic version for some use cases.
Looking ahead, are there new projects you’re excited about? Anything you haven’t tried yet but are eager to explore?
Most of my font library consist of sans serif families. However, I am currently focused on exploring serif typefaces and the possibilities of merging modern design elements with calligraphic roots of type. I am striving for optical richness and dynamism while keeping crisp, modern lines and good legibility in these projects.
