Fontstand

Inspired by 15th century Italian letterforms, Marco is Toshi Omagari’s lively text face with a touch of informality. It stems from Italian humanist typefaces, such as those esteemed for their beauty and ingenuity by Nicolas Jenson or Aldus Manutius. Marco’s strong calligraphic disposition makes it an excellent choice for continuous and intensive reading conditions — think of epic poems and complex plays with myriad characters and emphases. Its angled asymmetric serifs along the baseline and slightly flared stems lead the reader’s eye up and to the right in the Latin-based languages. This effect propels the reader through sentences and paragraphs for effortless reading. While Marco has a Titling Caps style available in OpenType programs, its bold weight has greater contrast than the regular weight and can therefore be used to emphasise text or as a display weight on its own. The italic styles, from their stem angle to the outstrokes and unique characters, such as ‘w’ and ‘x’, were created to show a distinct contrast from the roman styles and to highlight writing speed. Numerous stylistic alternates increase the connection to the family tree of calligraphy. Marco is full of features required for high-quality book typography, including strong language support in extended Latin, Cyrillic, and polytonic Greek, lining and oldstyle numerals, fractions, ligatures in excess, stylistic alternates to obtain the best possible solutions, a multitude of swashes in the Latin and Cyrillic italic styles, and other typographic niceties. As a result of these elements — over 1900 characters per style and almost 2600 in the italics — Marco is a mature and unique text face where its lively and somewhat informal style is an ideal counterpart to its careful and ingenious crafting.