New Additions: February 2026
28th February 2026
From the hundreds of fonts we add to the Identifont database every month we chose a selection of the most interesting recent additions, and interviewed the designers about their approach to each design:
Stella Chupik – Bussi (Schriftlabor)
Bussi is an elegant decorative typeface in two styles, Bussi Regular and Bussi Offset. What led you to design it?
Bussi was very much a passion project. It actually began as a very intuitive, playful lettering experiment. The earliest sketches date back to when I was preparing for my high-school graduation, where I found myself journaling a lot and creating joyful, swirling headline lettering, and that spirit carried over into the typeface. Over time, what started as caps-only headline lettering evolved into a fully developed typeface, with a broader character set and a clearer system behind it.
Rainer Scheichelbauer supported me a lot throughout the process, especially on the technical side. He also helped me critically evaluate certain features, deciding which ideas pushed too far into ornamentation and which ones were worth refining and expanding. That dialogue was incredibly valuable in shaping the final balance of the typeface.
A distinctive feature of Bussi is the teardrop terminals on several letters, such as the ‘C’, ‘G’, ‘J’, and ‘S’. What inspired that feature?
The overall structure of Bussi has a fairly clean, controlled backbone, and I wanted to introduce a softer, more expressive counterpoint. It also gives Bussi a more handcrafted feel while remaining rooted in a structured display aesthetic.
In Bussi Offset the characters look as if they are fashioned out of sheet metal, with cutouts, like pierced silver work. Was that a conscious inspiration?
It actually came from me experimenting with the offset and path features in Glyphs, where I designed the typeface. I was playing around with technical possibilities and became intrigued by how the cutout effect changed the character of the letters. What began as a technical exploration turned into a stylistic companion to the Regular.
Bussi includes several OpenType alternates, plus a few stylistic sets including Wavy, in which the horizontals are wavy, and Dotted, in which the counters contain dots. Did you plan these from the outset, or did the project grow as you thought of more ideas?
The core concept was there from the start, but the project definitely grew as I explored it further. Once the basic alphabet was defined, I enjoyed testing how far the decorative logic could go while still feeling cohesive. The Wavy and Dotted stylistic sets, for example, developed from those explorations. As both a graphic designer and a type designer, I wanted Bussi to work across a wide range of applications, and that meant building in tools that allow designers to subtly adjust the character and tone of the font.
Yann Esnault – Amsterdam Grotesk (Blaze Type)
You’ve written that Amsterdam Grotesk is a revival of a historical wood type. What year does it date from, and how did you discover it?
The original wood type was found in a type case at La Cambre Typography studio. Several years ago, it was recovered from a former Brussels printing house called Unitype. I became interested in its origins and, after some research and a stroke of luck, I found a specimen featuring this typeface. This specimen is from the Fonderie Typographique Française and showcases the types of the A. Martin & Cie foundry. The Fonderie Typographique Française was founded in Paris in 1921, while A. Martin & Cie was active from 1875 to 1937 and was based in Ardon, Switzerland.
According to my research, the A. Martin & Cie foundry only began selling these wood types to subcontractors or suppliers in the 1920s, and most of them date from before the war. Another Swiss type foundry called Roman Scherer offered a very similar type in their specimen dating from around 1905. Therefore, we can date its creation to the early 20th century, before the First World War.
Your revival consists of nine weights in regular and italic, plus variable fonts. Presumably the original wood type wasn’t available in a range of weights, so how did you approach designing the more extreme weights?
To design this range of weights, I first created the medium version, which is closest to the wood type. Then, I explored how extreme the weights could be while remaining relevant and consistent. If the thin version were any thinner, there would be no contrast; if the black version were any bolder, it would be illegible and the proportions of the original type would be altered too much.
The most distinctive feature of Amsterdam Grotesk is the calligraphic upward-pointing strokes on the ‘R’, ‘a’, and ‘t’. I’m finding it difficult to find any other sans-serif fonts with these features; is this a characteristic of other fonts of that time?
The type originally had serifs, which I removed to create this sans serif version. After creating the sans serif letters, I noticed a similarity between this typeface's shapes and proportions and those of the first sans-serif typefaces, which date from the early 19th century. I therefore drew inspiration from designs such as William Caslon's 1816 specimen (Two-line English Egyptian), Vincent Figgins's 1832 specimen (Two-line Great Primer Sans-serif), and Thorowgood's 1834 (Seven-line Grotesque). This design is a legacy of the wooden typeface and a stylistic choice based on the history of sans-serif typefaces.
Avril Ponce de León – RST Silvestre (Reset Type Studio)
RST Silvestre is an unusual typeface that takes advantage of the variable type format to allow you to vary the overall weight (wght) and serif weight (SERF) axes independently. What gave you the idea of exploring this approach?
Silvestre started as a university assignment, initially conceived as a single reverse-contrast slab serif font, something that today would sit close to a Solid Regular within the family. As the project went on, my professor at the time (Fernando Díaz!) encouraged me to explore its limits: how far could the logic of the design be pushed? That question led to the first extreme. The vertical stems became lighter, while the serifs grew as heavy as the system would allow. That contrast resulted in what later became RST Sharp Ultra, one of the family’s key masters.
When we decided to continue developing the project at Reset Type Studio, we began discussing variable fonts and their potential. Since the design already existed in both a regular instance and an extreme, it made sense to build a system that could contain both variants, and everything in between as well. Defining that system meant asking how the regular weight could be achieved through the interpolation of two axes, and what other extremes needed to be drawn to define that space. If overall weight and serif weight could vary independently, what would the opposite corners of that space look like? How do the shapes behave and interpolate across the space as one interacts with both axes?
You’ve divided the space defined by the two axes into five styles: Sharp (minimum weight), Blunt (small weight), Solid (medium weight), Strong (large weight), and Hard (maximum weight). Each style then varies the serif weight between Thin and Ultra. Why did you decide to do it this way, rather than make the five styles select different serif weights?
It’s a bit hard to explain without seeing all the styles in a grid (see RST Silvestre Grid), but visually the weight based grouping made more sense. The system is not completely symmetrical and the ranges are not equivalent across the two axes: for example, Sharp (minimum vertical weight) spans from Light to Ultra, while Hard (maximum vertical weight) spans from Bold to Ultra. Even Hard’s lightest variant remains structurally heavy. Organizing it by weight was simply more practical when looking at the grid. The serif variation works inside each range, but it doesn’t organize the system.
The instances in RST Silvestre span several different genres of typefaces, from reverse-contrast wood type fonts such as RST Silvestre Blunt and RST Silvestre Hard Ultra, through to conventional slab serif fonts like RST Silvestre Sharp Thin and RST Silvestre Solid. How do you anticipate designers taking advantage of this flexibility?
I think the possibilities lie in how the typeface can adapt to different contexts. While it always retains a slightly playful character, the fine tuning of each axis allows it to move toward more legible styles for longer texts or more expressive versions for display, titles, or branding. Being able to adjust the overall weight and serif weight independently makes it possible to control the level of contrast, depending on size or surrounding design elements. For example, the vertical stem weight can be matched to another stroke within a layout without sacrificing the reverse contrast created by the heavier serifs. And, as a variable font, it also opens up strong possibilities for motion.
Dušan Jelesijević – Epopeya (Tour De Force)
Epopeya is an unusual geometric sans-serif typeface in eight weights. What led you to design it?
For a long time I've been thinking of designing a wide, modern-looking family, but left the idea for later because condensed-width typefaces seem to be more versatile and interesting for the market. So, this time I wanted to pay tribute to extended width only; plus, we didn't have something similar in our font catalogue.
Epopeya is distinctive in the way there’s a visual conflict between the block-shaped letters such as the ‘A’, ‘M’, ’W’, and ‘X’, and the spiky terminals on letters such as the ‘a’, ‘m’, ‘r’, and ‘q’. Where did the inspiration for this originate?
Instead of inspiration I would say it was more like need, an urge to have something unique in the sans-serif category, as it is becoming very hard to design something fresh and new nowdays. It's quite a challenging job to design sans-serif in the oversaturated font market, if you want to make something recognisable. So, Epopeya combines a few concepts, and you've mentioned a couple of them: block-shaped letters, spiky terminals, ink-traps, and slab serifs as in ‘S’, ‘C’, and ‘G’. All spiced with display elements of letter architecture, and avoiding classical sans-serif shapes: for example ‘1’, ‘S’, ‘X’, and ‘Y’.
It’s impressive that you’ve managed to keep the visual character of Epopeya very consistent across the full range of weights, from extra light to black. Two ways you’ve achieved this is to truncate the top of the ‘A’ and reduce the slant of the terminals in the heavier weights. Did you arrive at these ideas from experimentation, or did you plan them from the start?
The slanting of the terminals was more a necessity. As you say, the angle changes as the weight gets thicker because the letters become darker, and it's more difficult to achieve legibility in the smaller sizes. On the other hand, cutting the top off the ‘A’ and other characters was planned from the start, as part of the design. Since we've close to 150 font families in our catalogue, it's a challenge when working on a new family not to repeat yourself. With Epopeya, I think we succeeded.