Overbold is an unapologetic display typeface inspired by an illustration in Eric Gill’s Essay on Typography (p.51), in which he demonstrates «how not to make letters». In particular, he shows that increasing the weight of the downstroke in a serif «A» without structural adjustments yields an absurd, «overbold» result. I found the letter so charming that I decided to blatantly disregard Gill’s wisdom and draw an entire overbold typeface. Here is the result. I’m not sorry.
Overbold comes with extensive glyph coverage in Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic. Check out the Greek — it’s probably the best part of the typeface! Furthermore, stylistic set SS01 offers an alternate ampersand, SS02 comprises infant letterforms, and SS03 grants merciful alternatives for the three strangest overbold capitals. The infant forms are also available as a spin-off font for convenience.
Have fun with Overbold! I certainly did.
I am grateful to the helpful souls on the TypeDrawers and Typographie.info forums for encouragement and constructive feedback, and to the Glyphs team for their fantastic type editor. Overbold is dedicated to my son Marius.
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