Font Feature of the Month: Fiducia

Michael Parson is the graphic designer and typographer who established Typogama Digital Type Foundry, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Beginning as a library of sorts for his own design and font research in 2002, Typogama continually strives to create innovative type designs that provide real solutions in any designer’s workflow.

One of Michael’s most recent releases is Fiducia, a gorgeous four-weight family inspired by the first Swiss banknotes at the start of the Industrial Age.

“Many years ago, as a design student, I had visited this amazing workshop where they had showed us a wide range of old printing machines, from Linotypes to Monotypes to various other letterpress machines,” Michael explained.

Still a budding type designer at the time, the workshop captured his imagination — perhaps more than he would realize at the time. “Being young, I then went on with my life and did not really think any further about the place until last summer when I suddenly had the urge to find the place.”

“I could not even remember the name,” he admitted, but a few internet searches led him to Association pour le Patrimoine Industriel (API), an association dedicated to preserving the industrial heritage of the printing process. 

He made contact with its cultural mediator, Franck, who was interested in Michael’s type work and suggested they meet face to face. “With a secret desire of joining the association, I headed off to the meeting with lots of specimens and examples of my work and it ended up being a great meet up,” Michael said.

Franck took him on a tour of all the machinery Michael remembered seeing so long ago, giving him the added thrill of seeing some repair work being done on one of the Monotype machines. “But the real treat came when he offered me to join the association and even further, asked whether I would be interested in doing an exposition of my work with them,” Michael said.  

“I was both thrilled and very nervous,” he said. “After all, I am a designer, so I always felt expositions were more reserved for artists and the like.”

Still, he jumped at the opportunity. The first proposal was to do the expo in the winter of 2019, which gave Michael a few months to work with. Thinking about what he could show at the event, he felt that he take things a step further and mark the occasion with a font.

“Initially, I was trying to find a way to link my activity, digital type design, with their archives of historical machines and typefaces,” he explained. “Obviously, making one of my digital fonts into a lead cast font would have been lovely, but I had no idea who could do this work and I imagined the costs would just be through the roof, so I had to find something else.”

Around that same time, Michael happened upon a flea market find that would shape the course of his project: a book that presented the various designs used on Swiss banknotes, along with their history. 

“I was particularly intrigued by the second series that had been designed by Eugène Burnand and Ferdinand Hodler, a well-known Swiss artist,” he told us. Michael knew of his artwork but had no idea he had worked on these banknotes.

“What caught my eye was the interesting blend of typography they had used, instead of sticking with one style, they had combined what seemed to be four distinct styles,” Michael observed. 

He told us that while one might wonder what money has to do with typography in general, the concept spoke to him. 

“I thought about the place of money within our society and its industrial role. In the industrial age, fonts were obviously lead objects, they had a real, tangible value,” Michael explained. “In my digital world, fonts have lost that material value, they have become virtual objects, living only within the confines of digital code until they are output onto a surface.” 

“In the same light, money has equally seen these profound changes in perception, going from a gold standard with a real, material value, to one that lives in the realms of the digital trading and is upheld solely by our confidence in the system and their value, cryptocurrencies being an extreme example.”

From this idea, the concept for his font, Fiducia, was borne.

“Rather than taking the route of trying to create an authentic revival, I settled on using the source as a loose inspiration, thereby giving me the creative freedom to create the letterforms that I wanted,” he said.

“My main inspiration from the banknotes was to define the four styles I would create, the Serif weight which was used predominately in the large sizes, a secondary condensed serif that I called the Modern weight that was used for the longer words. I then added in a Sans serif style that was used for the smaller texts and finally, a Slab weight that was inspired by the numerals used at the bottom of the bill.”

The project was ambitious, indeed, particularly with the three-month timeframe, but he jumped head-first into the project. The event was later pushed back to May of 2020 — further derailed when COVID-19 arrived in Geneva. 

“Despite being sad the event was pushed back, it actually gave me a bit more time to dig even further and add in some extra titling Opentype features I had been considering, so all in all, it actually ended being good news,” Michael explained. “I could actually finish all the details I wanted and start to get a bit more involved in the promotional side.”

The exposition was slated to be held in November of this year, although the second round of the ongoing pandemic reared its ugly head. Michael told us that it “feels like a never-ending story,” but is hopeful that things will turn around in the near future.

From start to finish, Fiducia took about 10 months to complete. Michael noted that it was not an every-day job; instead, he would work on it, let it rest, and return with fresh eyes later — finding that the process of stepping away can help. 

Since he chose not to do a “real” revival, he had the advantage of creative liberties when it came to the design of each letterform. Michael said that the main reason for this was the strange letter Q in the serif style, which featured “a tiny little tail that just seemed out of sorts with the letters.”

“So rather than forcing myself to follow some historical archive, I felt it was more interesting to try to add a new design and this inspired me more,” he explained.

He’d create a few base letters in upper and lowercase and then work on the forms to define their overall proportions. Once he was satisfied, he would move on to the other letters to create the entire alphabet. 

“I also tended to work on each font in isolation, so I was not looking to share any common features between each style,” he noted. “They each live within their own worlds.”

Michael told us that the Fiducia family shares a common x-height and capital alignment so each style can be combined seamlessly

The OpenType titling feature adds descriptive forms to each letter, an idea that emerged after Michael initially completed the fonts. “Since I was getting ready for the exposition, I was thinking about what type of promotional tools I could create,” he said.

He knew that he’d want a printed specimen but he also wanted to create some more interesting items – thinking that most of the crowd might not actually know a lot about fonts already.

“I wanted something people could play with,” Michael said. “The idea struck while looking back at the original banknotes, I would just make my own money!”

He told us that he had great fun designing four retro-inspired banknotes, with each one fearing a different weight of the font.

“I must say, when I received the printed documents, I felt like some villain in a James Bond movie who had just robbed the bank,” he told us. “I can’t buy anything with them yet, but it was a fun feeling being ‘virtually’ rich!”

Michael said that the family’s name was originally set to be called “Patrimoine” as a show of celebration and gratitude toward the association, but he grew concerned that it might not be the best choice from a legal perspective. 

“For an English speaker, Patrimoine may seem like a new name, but for the French, it was just a common term to describe patrimony. I therefore had some doubts over whether I would be able to protect the name,” he explained. “Since I had a bit of time, I kept thinking about it and finally settled on Fiducia, which in Latin means confidence, or security, the trust of something.”

During the design process, Michael noted that most of the challenges he faced involved his own internal debates, such as choosing the right x-height, the differences in proportions across the fonts, but most importantly, “are these fonts actually going to work well when used together,” he said.

One major question revolved around the design of the Sans weight. 

“Being in Switzerland, home to Helvetica, my mind was immediately drawn to its shape while designing this style, with design aspects like the straight terminals,” he explained. “Despite thinking this is a very elegant solution, I did notice the banknotes featured terminals that were cut at an angle, closer to something like Arial, to my horror!”

Michael reasoned that since the forms were dated around 1910-15, the letters were created long before modernism or the Swiss style, with the inspiration likely closer to Akzidenz Grotesk. “Despite not being a complete fan of the diagonal terminal, I settled with that through a desire to be more authentic to the roots of the design,” he told us.

The extra titling forms presented “a final, slightly stupid challenge,” Michael noted. “Especially in the serif weight, these letters are filled with decorative lines and elements, reminiscent of the engraved plates of which they were inspired.”

Sounds wonderful, right? Michael thought so, too, and he was quite happy to have completed all of the extra letters.

“I went to export a test version and suddenly the outputted fonts started playing up, letters were missing, warning signs, etc.,” he said. “So I was really worried, thinking, I am all ready to go, I want to add a final touch and now I have blown it!”

Thankfully, it wouldn’t be long before Michael could breathe a sigh of relief, having experienced similar issues with complex fonts in the past. 

“I had some ideas to work around the issues and I was also starting to get to grips with the new version of FontLab 7, which has been fantastic, and actually offered a perfect solution that covered my last technical issues,” he explained.

Fiducia offers four character sets that work beautifully together or alone. Featuring Sans, Modern, Serif, and Slab versions, this type family is perfect for everything from displays and signage to editorials, advertising, logo design, product packaging, merchandise, marketing materials, publishing, website designs, mobile applications, posters, labels, tags, and of course – your own banknotes.

(For fun, of course – not profit.)

Fiducia offers plenty of versatility through OpenType, including fractions, standard ligatures, subscript, superscript, lining figures, oldstyle figures, proportional figures, tabular figures, small caps, and stylistic alternates. It extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Pan African Latin, and Basic Greek for design projects intended for an international audience.

“I think my next release will probably be this condensed, bold typeface, currently called Conica, that would be for headlines,” Michael told us. He feels it is finished, although he still has some doubts, particularly regarding the potential addition of more ligatures. 

He shared that he’s also been sidetracked by an idea for a new script that his him quite excited, as well. “I don’t have a name yet and it is still in the working phase, but it is the one I am currently thinking about. It is approaching the forms by showing a stroke overlap that I found really exciting, at least in my sketches! So far, it looks promising, so that may take priority,” Michael noted.

“I guess like most creatives, I have a collection of projects I am currently working on,” he said. “Generally, I find that my work process is a bit manic. I get an idea, then I tend to get a bit compulsive and spend every working hour focused on working through the idea to create a functioning font.”

“But once that is done, I then like to put it down and move on without completing the work. So I have five or six typefaces in that stage, completed but on standby. They are there, I look at them every now and again, and then suddenly, I will get a new idea or craving that pushes me to complete the font.”

No matter what he releases next, we’re always excited to see his new work!

“I just hope that people will enjoy using the fonts and that they will find their place within the type world,” Michael told us. “I always look forward to seeing my fonts in action.”

He noted that he sees them this way when he creates the promotional tools for each of his fonts, but it’s much more exciting and surprising to see others incorporating his fonts in their finished work.

Michael Parson currently offers 51 products through YouWorkForThem, including a range of serifs, sans serifs, scripts, and beautiful display fonts perfect for design projects of all kinds. Visit his portfolio to take a look at the rest of his work and bookmark it so you won’t miss out on new releases later on!