The engravers sans serifstrikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900shas been one of the most widely used stationers lettering styles since about 1900.
Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families.
Sweet Sans fills that void. More The family is based on antique engravers lettering templates called masterplates. Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die.
This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do.
But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth centuryespecially the engravers sansare still quite familiar and appealing.
Referencing various masterplateswhich typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little elseMark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps.
The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages.
Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.
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