David Březina—multilingual typography & typeface design

Overview

Skolar is a text serif, originally designed with scholarly and multilingual publications in mind. The typeface maintains its credibility while incorporating a subtle personal style, neither neutral nor conspicuous.

Prominent serifs and low-contrast modulation add to its robustness, and, together with a relatively large x‑height, improve the typeface’s readability in small sizes. This family of three weights with their respective italics and large character set is flexible enough for complex text settings and editorial work. It also becomes distinctive in bigger sizes, fitting the demands of corporate design.

There have been many practical solutions introduced in the typeface; the capitals are rather low in comparison to the ascenders. This gives the typeface even texture and more space for capital diacritical marks. The italic has a shallow angle and large counters for better readability in small print. It is easily recognized but not ostentatious, blending well with the uprights. Semibold is weighted to emphasize text blocks, where Bold is intended for word clusters. The family includes a complex set of smart arrows which can be easily keyed and infinitely combined using OpenType features. It was released with TypeTogether and it is available for web using Typekit as well.

Recognitions

Skolar & Surat won at the European Design Awards in 2008. Skolar was selected as one of the best typefaces of 2008 by i love typography. Skolar was awarded by a Special Diploma at the international type design competition Modern Cyrillic 2009 and won the first prize in the Cyrillic text type category at Granshan 2009.