I learned so many typographic rules and drew so many letters that I was curious to find out how a letter could look different from what I have learned but still be able to recognize it without any doubt. Based on geometric principles I searched for new solutions still compatible with common letterforms. Diamonds is meant to be stumbled upon, yet shine in the typographic jungle.
A display type face follows different rules than a text face: It is designed to catch attention. Catching attention can be acheived by making something different than the “standard”, something the eye stumbles across and the brain thinks: “Hey man, someting is not usual here – but I like it, its nice!”. The Diamonds type family is an experimental search for geometric new letterforms, which are still easy to read and generate some unexpected attention. The result is a straight and clear typeface pulled away from the path of classic and well learned letter shapes.
“I created a set of unusual geometric letterforms in ALL CAPS and different weights. I also wanted to have a controller to reduce the eccentric factor, so I created a sceond fitting alphabet of more known letterforms.” says Hannes von Döhren. All letters work homogenous together, so the user can decide which letters should stand out and which should be more silent.
A font of today’s needs has to include more than just the alphabet and some punctuation. Besides a big number of accented letters, making sure that the typeface has a good language support, a font should include several features for excellent typographic work joining forces with the layout applications of the time and of course the user. Here is a selection of what this font family has to offer under the hood.
SHOOT!
If two letters have the nature to collide when used in combination a ligature is needed to solve this unwanted event. Ligatures are especially designed solutions for such letter combinations. This font contains a set of ligatures which are automatically substituted as soon as these letter combinations are typed in.
The Massive
Besides the standard letters a font sometimes contains several versions of a letter called alternates. You can exchange the alternate with the standard letter by selecting it through the Opentype feature panel and every letter of the stylistic set will be exchanged. Often this results in a totally different optical appearance of the typeface.
1/2 Swag and 3/5 Style, bro.
If fractions are needed anywhere an OpenType code makes sure that if you type any numbers combined with a slash between a fraction will automatically be substituted.
Rotating Italics
We designed the Italics of Diamonds with a special idea. If you type something in italic and rotate it exactly 15 degrees contraclockwise the stems will be exactly vertical again. You can use this effect to write your sentence or headline with a special impact.
Additionally to the letters this font family contains a big set of ornaments, borders, catchwords and symbols fitting to the characteristics of the typeface. The user can combine text and ornament elements keeping a homogenous design language. Here is a small selection:
Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Belarusian, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Chichewa, Comorian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino/Tagalog, Finnish, Flemish, French, Gaelic, Gagauz, German, Gikuyu, Gilbertese/Kiribati, Haitian-Creole, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Kashubian, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luba/Ciluba/Kasai, Luxembourgish, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Maori, Marquesan, Moldovan/Romanian, Montenegrin, Nauruan, Ndebele, Norwegian, Oromo, Palauan/Belauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Samoan, Sango, Serbian, Sesotho, Setswana, Seychellois-Creole, Swazi, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok-Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvaluan, Uzbek, Wallisian, Walloon, Welsh, Xhosa, Zulu
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