Miklós Kis Misztótfalusi (Nicholas Kis) was among the fist to found Armenian types. He prepared his first set of exotic types before September 1685 for the Armenian printing house in Amsterdam. It was the knowledgeable mayor of Amsterdam who requested that those types be founded. These types were used to print the mayor’s (Nicolaes Witsen) work entitled Noord en Oost Tartarye. Misztótfalusi’s name appears in the colophon of the book. Later, in 1687, he found Georgian types, which were, in many respects, similar to the Armenian set. Since there was no printing house in Georgia, he designed the types on the basis of some manuscripts. Unfortunately, as legend has it, the types never reached the Georgian court, which had commissioned Misztótfalusi to design them. They were either lost or stolen somewhere in Sweden. However, a sample sheet survived and was found in 1980 in Amsterdam. It may seem to make no sense to ’re-Latinise’ the types of Misztótfalus, who himself was a great master in founding Latin types, and for whom Armenian types meant the first step in a new direction.
I published this revival typeface in 2001. I named it Xodus and it can be found in the T-26 Digital Typeface Library in Chicago. Then I felt that this typeface had more potential in it, to express more things in more exciting ways, and so I began to work, once again, on Xodus. The result was a totally new typeface.
After refounding, Xodus called for a new name. I tried to find a name that refers to its predecessor and I also wanted it to express that the new type is more than just verion of the previous one. Eventually, I chose Nexodus as its name, and I also made a new set of ornaments as well as many ligatures and Zodiac signs.
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