Alessandro Segalini

Hemingway is an eight-weight sans serif font family designed by Alessandro Segalini and released in 2009.

Segalini was inspired by the prize-winning novel The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. The typeface was designed with a visual mixture of sharpness and harshness but shows soft and gentle hints – much like the qualities of the ocean in Hemingway’s novel.

Hemingway’s unique inclusion of angular and sharp terminals mixed with the calligraphic nature of its italic weights gives it an antique, worn look as if carved into wood with a knife. The font currently supports 98 languages.

The latest advancements in font technology and the dynamic variable OT format (VAR) introduced the possibility to add a new set of masters to the design space (a simplified/optical sans suitable for longer texts) for all styles, and at once deliver the entire family in two VAR files (Roman and Italic) with control “sliders” for weight and optical size. I am collaborating with a font engineer for production, and a major digital foundry is interested in publishing this redesign for its aesthetic uniqueness, and because optical sizes can now be called via CSS font specifications for screen-based responsive typesetting.