Ardoise

Ardoise met the needs of publications

Ardoise was born from a research started with the Charente typeface created in 1999. The later, designed for the daily La Charente Libre, met the needs of a newpapers typeface featuring a low contrast, straightforward forms, as Franklin Gothic. The typeface extension to normal widths was developed from 2006 by Jean François Porchez and materialized in 2010 for the redesign of the magazine Pèlerin. The weight completion of the family, including italics was a first stage, followed by the extension to condensed series for the public launch at Typofonderie few months later. The verticals metrics and proportions of Ardoise match perfectly Le Monde extended family.

Ardoise, inspired by the needs of today’s fine newspapers offers simple and tense shapes designed to renew and revitalize. Ardoise and its 45 series could be considered as an homage to Antique Olive, but quite indirectly and as an organic result of the designer’s longstanding admiration of the work of Roger Excoffon. Ardoise shares a purity and dynamics with Excoffon’s designs giving it a unique elegance and excellent readability. Its sturdiness means it is virtually immune it to distortion. Each font features a full glyph set covering nearly all languages which use the latin script. All typographic needs are provided for including small caps, various set of figures, dingbats & so on. In addition, a few alternates glyphs (a, c, g, l) can be used to alter the overall tone of a text setting.