Edward.
Glyphs
Edward Design Information
TYPE BY Edward is designed by Hendrik Weber. Edward is Weber’s second published typeface, joining the award-winning Lirico, released in 2008.
Edward is named in honour of Edward Johnston, calligrapher, teacher, and author of Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (1906). For those familiar with Johnston’s work, the inspiration behind Edward will be immediately recognizable: the ‘blockletter’ Johnston designed for the London Underground in 1916, for use in their signs and posters.
With this alphabet, Johnston created something new, a work-a-day display sans serif whose design was informed by Roman square capitals, humanist minuscules and old face types, but decisively shaped by simple geometry. The result was impressive and practical, and well-suited to the signs and posters in which it appeared.
The influence of Johnston’s sans serif is suggested in subsequent German typefaces such as Erbar (1922), Kabel and Futura (both 1927). But it was not until 1928 that the Monotype Corporation released a comparable typeface onto the British market. The success of that typeface, Gill Sans, helped establish what we now call the ‘humanist’ sans serif in the typographic palette. Its designer, Eric Gill, fully acknowledged his debt to Johnston.
Today Johnston’s blockletter may not be as famous as Gill Sans, though through Gill’s typeface it has exerted perhaps a greater force on the progress of type and lettering over the last century. Johnston’s blockletter was undoubtedly influential when it was first designed and it is still influential today. Hendrik Weber’s Edward is proof of that, a sans serif that carries on Johnston’s spirit, dressed in tweed, typically British and anything but neutral.
In Edward, Weber’s passion for subtle but vibrant shapes is hard to miss. They are full of character and yet functional. The alternate glyph sets are especially inventive: capital K and lowercase k, lowercase t, and alternate lowercase g are notable. Insert them to swing Edward’s mood from geometric modern to calligraphic vernacular. Throughout, Weber’s drawing skills and expert detailing shine through. Edward’s extensive font family insures a typographic reach capable of many voices for posters, packaging and annual reports.
Edward comes in nine weights of roman and italic. The character set includes small caps; lining, old style and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive scientific superiors and inferiors, nominators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols (in tabular and proportional widths); arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; sets of stylistic alternates; and a complete range of accents for all Western, Central and East European languages based on the Latin script.
Edward is available in OTF CFF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats. Legacy font formats are available on request.
Supported Languages
- Afrikaans
- Albanian
- Asu
- Basque
- Bemba
- Bena
- Breton
- Catalan
- Chiga
- Colognian
- Cornish
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Embu
- English
- Esperanto
- Estonian
- Faroese
- Filipino
- Finnish
- French
- Friulian
- Galician
- Ganda
- German
- Gusii
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Inari
- Sami
- Indonesian
- Irish
- Italian
- Jola-Fonyi
- Kabuverdianu
- Kalenjin
- Kamba
- Kikuyu
- Kinyarwanda
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Lower
- Sorbian
- Luo
- Luxembourgish
- Luyia
- Machame
- Makhuwa-Meetto
- Makonde
- Malagasy
- Maltese
- Manx
- Meru
- Morisyen
- North
- Ndebele
- Northern
- Sami
- Norwegian
- Bokmal
- Norwegian
- Nynorsk
- Nyankole
- Oromo
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Quechua
- Romanian
- Romansh
- Rombo
- Rundi
- Rwa
- Samburu
- Sango
- Sangu
- Scottish
- Gaelic
- Sena
- Serbian
- Shambala
- Shona
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Soga
- Somali
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Swedish
- Swiss
- German
- Taita
- Teso
- Turkish
- Upper
- Sorbian
- Uzbek
- Volapuk
- Vunjo
- Walser
- Welsh
- Western
- Frisian
- Zulu