Chronical Hairline is One Gorgeous Font

chronicle_hairline_examples3As brand storytelling becomes mainstream, type designers are delivering up fonts that fit the bill beautifully.

The fashion industry has long recognized the power of a good font, starting with Harper’s Bazaar and its use of distinctive typefaces early in the last century, notes this article in Typography.com.

“Ever since Alexey Brodovitch adorned the pages of Harper’s Bazaar with high-contrast ‘Modern’ typefaces more than eighty years ago, typefaces with billowy curves and fine hairlines have remained a signature of the fashion industry,” the article explains. “More recently, as typography has begun to play a more central role in visual storytelling, these typefaces’ exquisite details and proud features have invited larger-than-life applications, allowing them to create the same kinds of enticing visual fantasies as enthralling fashion layouts and well-dressed windows.”

Hoefler & Co., the company that publishes the Typography blog, has retooled their gorgeous Chronical Display font family and is now offering Chronical Hairline, a “new collection of bright and graceful typefaces for creating grand, expressive, and picturesque typography.”

“In contrast to the steely detachment of a Modern, Chronicle Hairline is direct and welcoming: a tweed to the Modern’s silk, a Savile Row to its Place Vendôme,” the article notes, painting quite a vivid story of their own. “It’s subtly shaded curves and neatly bracketed serifs give Chronicle Hairline the kind of warmth normally associated with Old Style typefaces. But the clear geometry of its beaks and terminals, its unfussy numbers, and its alert and practical italics, mark Chronicle Hairline as an indisputably contemporary design.”

These really would look fantastic in large spaces like posters, magazine covers, books and the like, as well as brand identity materials. You can find purchase info in the article linked above.