Typedesign

About the Typespecimen

A stylish type-specimen to show the charactersets, OpenType features and the usage of the typeface Sirba on several kinds of paper, uncoated, coated, white and off-white and different thicknesses. A tool for a graphic designer to see when Sirba can be used for various projects (many papers), therefore is at the bottom of a few pages the same text repeated. One of the qualities of Sirba is that the typeface remains very legible and readable even in very small sizes of 5 pt.

The cover has a subtle embossing on both sides and the pattern on the first page is composed of glyphs of Sirba and printed with letterpress.

Another nice feature is this booklet is that a few pages are printed on a letterpress press (a Glöckner Mercedes of the year 1956). On these pages you can see a tangible imprint on the imprint (one side of the paper is deliberately left blank). One of the reasons for using this old technique is to make a little bridge to the period when typefaces where designed for the use in text intensive books from another era. Another reason is that printing on a printing press is a pleasant traditional process to see and work together with the printer to get the right tangible impression, visible without the characters come straight through the paper. Sirba remains a font designed for use in today's digital world.

The ink in the type-specimen on the offset pages is deliberately kept the same. Normally printers keep the black on a page as black as possible, in this case Ð because different kinds of paper are used Ð it was neccessary to adjust the amount of ink on every individual kind of paper to get an identical impression throughout the booklet.

Some technical notes
Amount of pages: 24
Printed process: page 1-4 and 21-24, Letterpress, printed at a Glšckner Mercedes cilinderpress.
page 5-20, Offset, on a Heidelberg Speedmaster 52.
Limited edition: 525 pieces

Below are some pictures of the typespecimen.