New Additions: October 2025
31st October 2025
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:
Francisco Gálvez Pizarro – Otta (PampaType)
What prompted you to design Otta; was it for a particular project?
I created it for a reissue of a typography book I made in 2004 called “Educación Tipográfica” (Typographic Education). However, the book changed completely when it was updated and new material was included, which also led me to change its title to “Hacer y Componer” (Making and Composing) in 2018.
The font design began around 2015, and the goal was to include different alphabets and types of writing so that they could be explained and coexist on the pages of the book. This was inspired by another book from 1974 by an artist of Czechoslovakian origin (now the Czech Republic) that showed different scripts from around the world.
The work involved researching the design of the Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, Armenian, and Japanese syllabaries, and even Phoenician characters, which took me quite some time, and I only designed the Book weight (for the composition of the main text). Then the idea of publishing the font came up, and for that I developed those alphabets in the other weights.
Although the strokes in Otta look perfectly geometric, it also conveys a hand drawn appearance. How did you achieve that?
Yes, that was the hardest part for me. It's a dichotomy between the tradition of geometric proportions in Latin letters and a very subtle irregularity in the contours. It's not a new idea; Adrian Frutiger applied it in Méridien in a different way. There have been several designs that capture the appearance of irregular letters, in a facsimile manner. The irregularity resulting from the imperfections of printing in incunabula or old books is noticeable in fonts such as Fell Type by P22 or, to a lesser extent, in Garamond Premier Pro; in Otta it is more subtle, I even hesitated to do it because it is a problem for hinting on screens and is due to the slight inclination of the vertical strokes, as in Trinité by De Does, which are not exactly parallel. Additionally, the slight curvature of the serifs but without a transition or link to the stems – sometimes there is, but very small – gives a sharp appearance to the shapes in immersive reading sizes.
Otta has some similarities with the earlier PampaType typeface Atahualpa by Alejandro Lo Celso. Was that an influence on its design?
No, because I started the font in 2015, and Atahualpa was probably started around that time. What did impress me was that it's a design in line with Otta's thinking, but in a completely different way. Although they share the horizontal contrast, Atahualpa is much more refined and vigorous than Otta. That made me very happy with what I was doing because it wasn't crazy to make a font for inverted or horizontal contrast reading. In fact, other fonts along those lines have been published, such as the sans-serif design FF Balance (1993) and the serif Nordvest (2016). The problem is that it takes me a long time to publish fonts!
The Otta family includes two display versions, Otta Display Bold and Otta Display Black, but the difference between these and the normal versions is quite subtle. What applications are the display versions intended for?
The display versions were created before I made the bold weight. In the 2018 book, I used that display version in some letters, but I wasn't convinced by the result. When I started working on the Cyrillic, Arabic, and Greek characters, I decided to make a more conservative bold version without as much contrast. Thus, the display versions remained within the family for alternative use, as that contrast does not work well in small sizes. I feel that the value of those display versions is best appreciated in Arabic and Greek writing as well as in the italic versions of the Latin.
Otta seems to support a wide range of writing systems; was that an aim of the project?
I think that Otta is a fairly complex project, especially in terms of IPA characters, but there are also writing systems that have not been included, such as Japanese syllabaries, Hebrew, Devanagari, and Armenian. The idea is to add them gradually, as the other weights still need to be completed. For now, these systems are only complete in the Book weight.
Patrick Nell – APN Ochra (Alphabets Patrick Nell)
APN Ochra is a thin elegant sans-serif typeface with a hint of contrast. What inspired you to design it?
Thank you! During the process of designing my old-style book face APN Chora, I inevitably concerned myself quite intensely with the roots of that letter; its regional origins, but also the roots of our alphabet in general, really. So I already had Florentine Quattrocento letterforms in my mind and in front of my eyes quite a lot at the time.
But unlike the Roman letters of, say, de Spira, Jenson, or Griffo, these earlier Florentine forms of lettering are not something I naturally gravitate toward; too irregular, too much of a patchwork perhaps, with their glyphic letterforms being neither fish nor flesh, but nonetheless intriguing!
Then suddenly, and this is a pattern I know by now, I found myself, almost unwillingly, so deeply immersed in the subject that I began wondering how I would approach a design in that specific vein myself and whether I could give it my own twist; add something unique. That’s exactly what happened here… If I say I like to challenge myself it sounds like a cliché; I really don’t. But at the same time, I do have a certain urge to understand things that feel a bit foreign to me, or that seem slightly removed from the main branches of my own tree of taste, if you will. Now, I guess I should emphasize that APN Ochra is not a fully glyphic typeface. In structure and principle, it’s a sans-serif largely based on my old-style APN Chora. It builds on its forms but translates the logic of the serif into subtly chiseled terminals and thins the strokes in a Florentine manner.
One other aspect inspired me: I’m always fascinated by the fact that there is not one Renaissance, but we’re in a constant process of rediscovery. I wrote about this in the APN Chora specimen; it’s the reason for the name Chora and, by extension, Ochra. These cycles, and especially times of transition, interest me greatly, and they often produce exceptional artefacts. Such a period was, of course, the Italian Quattrocento, when a distinctive kind of sans-serif lettering emerged: rich in variation, often characterized by wedge-shaped strokes and trumpet-like flaring terminals; less calligraphic than epigraphic.
The closest font I can find on Identifont to compare with APN Ochra is Hermann Zapf’s humanist sans-serif, Optima. Was that an influence on APN Ochra?
Yes, Optima was definitely a point of reference. Zapf was famously inspired by Florentine letterforms, especially those from Santa Croce. which was one of my own main sources of inspiration as well. So it was interesting to take a closer look at what he made of them. Our uppercase proportions share the same Roman inscriptional roots, too.
I also looked at Stellar by Robert Hunter Middleton, Joachim Romann’s Romann-Antiqua, and the more recent Florentine Set by Garrett Boge and Paul Shaw (whose writings I obviously consulted as well). There are a few others, but yes you’re absolutely right; in many regards, Optima comes closest.
You’ve described APN Ochra as a display and titling companion to your serif typeface APN Chora. Did you design them in parallel as companions from the outset?
The skeletons of the letters follow the forms I developed for APN Chora; this is one of the main differentiators from the typefaces mentioned above. But no, APN Ochra was not planned at all. Quite the contrary, I originally wanted APN Chora to stand as a minimalist, single-weight family specifically for books and long-form text; just the Roman and the italic.
But as it turned out, APN Chora proved itself to be a really strong base for experimentation. As I was reflecting on the Florentine traditions, it felt natural to introduce even more historical paradox into my Renaissance old-style forms by combining them with the earlier Florentine ones — thus expanding the APN Chora family with a related face for display and branding, while still following my consciously minimalist idea and the ideals of book typography I had in mind. So APN Ochra became more of a happy afterthought, a not-too-distant relative; the eccentric young uncle, or something like that.
APN Ochra Italic is a true italic, and not just an oblique version of the regular; in particular, the ‘f’, ‘v’, and ‘y’ have letter shapes closer to handwritten letters. Why did you decide to take this approach?
This goes back to your first question. In general, I see myself more as an architect of letters than a writer of letters – but exactly for that reason, I’m mostly not interested in oblique Romans. Not only are there good, functional, practical arguments for true italics, but honestly, slanted Roman minuscules bore me a bit. Even for my neo-modernist slab serif, APN Ggantija, I drew separate letterforms for the italic. So yes, especially in the ‘y’ with its reverse ogee curve that approximates an inverted ‘S’, I allowed myself to play a little with the letterforms!
Elsa Drevous – Narri (Blaze Type)
What led you to design Narri; was it for a particular project?
The design of the Narri typeface began with the creation of letters for the 36 Days of Type challenge. I was just having fun creating weird letters every day; for example: elsadrevous on Instagram. It then took a lot of work to create a coherent set, as each letter was designed separately in an ornamental style.
Almost all the characters in Narri are created with a single, flowing stroke, with no straight lines. Did you draft them with ink on paper before creating the final digital version?
Yes, the idea was to draw the glyphs as much as possible in a continuous line. The shape of the letters was researched by hand to find the right design for each one. The thick and thin contrast rhythm was then worked on digitally.
It’s a sign of the originality of Narri that I’m finding it hard to find any similar fonts to compare it with on Identifont. The closest I can get is Linotype Zurpreis. Were you influenced by any earlier fonts?
I didn't have any particular influence, I just wanted to have fun with calligraphic forms. As a result, it wasn't easy to create the system for this font, as I couldn't find any similar references. Furthermore, not using any specific tools for calligraphic drawing sometimes made the choices subjective and more complex.
Some of the characters in Narri are almost indecipherable in isolation, but somehow perfectly readable when in a complete section of text. Examples are the ‘F’, ‘J’, ‘Q’, ‘X’, ‘a’, and ‘g’. Did you have to experiment with each character to achieve the ideal balance between design and readability?
I wanted to keep this font decorative, playful, and unusual. It was necessary to find a balance between retaining certain characters with a distinctive design while trying to remain as legible as possible. I was also surprised at first to see that the overall rendering of this font remained sufficiently legible despite its atypical design. However, Narri remains a display typeface that is more suited to title or branding projects.
Dušan Jelesijević – Rebuke (Tour De Force)
Rebuke is a serif font in six weights, from regular to black, and italics. Where did the idea for the typeface originate?
The idea came from playing in FontLab. After creating the usual shapes of a few letters in the Didone style I was looking for a twist in the design, something that will make the design recognisable. The breakthrough was when I found a design style that worked well on most of the letters.
Rebuke has a calligraphic look, as if it was hand drawn with a pen and ink. Did you draft it on paper before digitising it?
No, I didn't. It was completely made on the computer. It's mixture of a few styles; there are elements of Didone, calligraphy, and modern serif fonts.
Rebuke Black reminds me a bit of an early Bitstream font, Sprocket. Was that, or any other font, an influence on Rebuke?
They have some of the same vibes, but there wasn't any influence, at least as far as I'm aware. I might have seen something somewhere and applied it unconsciously in Rebuke.
One of the distinctive features of Rebuke is the long baseline bars on the ‘F’, ‘P’, ‘T’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘4’, and ‘7’. What inspired this feature?
At first it started with the serif extension to the right on the ‘r’ in order to give more stability to the letter, but then I decided to exaggerate it and apply the same idea to some other letters as well. Some of the letters you mentioned didn't need it as part of the design, but I felt it would be a nice addition in overall font recognition. These extensions fit in with the calligraphic nature of the design, like the extended bar on the ‘e’.
Rebuke is probably not an easy font family to use in an application as it contains a lot of characteristics that many designers or other users might find just too aggressive. But I did it with a lot of love and I'm really satisfied how it looks – I can recognize it anywhere when I see it.