In 2014, when art director Yorgo Tloupas was tapped to design a glossy biannual magazine called “The Book” for luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton, he turned to his friends at Production Type to develop a new face for it: Antique Gothic, a multipurpose condensed sans serif.
Tloupas rifled through the Louis Vuitton archives, pulling out vintage ads that incorporated the kind of sans he was after. Production plumbed its own trove of specimen books from unsung French foundries like Berthier & Durey, Turlot, and Warnery, among others, to push the concept further. The result, Antique Gothic, is a straightforward condensed sans featuring relatively open terminals, compact extenders, straight sides, and spacious counters — with a few details borrowed from “belle-époque” jobbing types to make it stand out.
The pointy spur of the ‘G’ and serif of the numeral ‘1’ reemerge in the ‘Q’s tail; the scooped flag of the ‘5’ and notched stem of the ‘t’ allude to Antique Gothic’s distant origins in the modern serif; the chiseled ‘t’ stem affords height without adding heaviness. Antique Gothic is lean and self-contained enough to play well with others in tight editorial settings, but its distinctive traits lend it equally well to solo performances. Think branding and packaging.
Branching out from its original mission, the new offering has evolved and become more versatile, ripe for wider circulation. Antique Gothic has three light weights (ExtraLight, SemiLight, and Light), a Regular weight, and a Medium weight. The Extended Latin character set offers comprehensive language support. Three different uppercase heights enable playful and sophisticated compositions.
Original art direction with Yorgo Tloupas. Design: Jean-Baptiste Levée. Team: Emmanuel Besse, Yoann Minet, Quentin Schmerber, Hugues Gentile, Pauline Fourest, Kristina Jandova.
