Extensions to two great ITF families: Introducing Begum Sans, Diodrum Rounded, and Diodrum Condensed

We get pretty excited when the typefaces we develop are embraced by our clients. Seeing customers around the world use them in their work spurs us on. One of the ways we react to our typefaces’ adoption is to expand on those popular ideas, to make our preexisting design systems even more useful.

Today we are happy to introduce our two most-recent type family expansions. Begum Sans joins the multi-script serif-based Begum design, giving editorial and packaging designers even more options. Our sans serif Diodrum family also already includes options for several scripts. Now we’ve added two more Latin-script designs to that type system: Diodrum Rounded and Diodrum Condensed

Diodrum
As families, Diodrum Rounded and Diodrum Condensed each have six weights. Every weight has a companion italic available, too. Like our original Diodrum family, Diodrum Rounded and Diodrum Condensed are spurless sans Latin-script designs. ‘Spurless’ typefaces feature smooth transitions from letters’ stems into their curved strokes. A quick look the lowercase ‘n’ illustrates this perfectly – in typical sans serif faces, there might still be spur on top of the letter’s top-left corner. Because of its multiple weights, versatile range, and formal style, the original Diodrum and our new Diodrum extensions are excellent choices for use in Corporate Design and UI/UX applications. 

While some letters in the Diodrum Rounded and Diodrum Condensed families include a modicum of stroke contrast, the design of the typefaces are generally monolinear. The families’ x-heights have been set high, and the counterforms are large and open. These help makes Diodrum Rounded and Diodrum Condensed appear friendly, as well as being legible. Another design feature is visible in the typefaces’ diagonals: instead of being drawn with straight lines, the diagonals swell outwards. These curves give letters with prominent diagonals (‘K,’ ‘V,’ ‘W’ … even the ‘N’) an increased dynamism. 
Begum Sans is a Latin-script family that joins ITF’s Begum type system, which already includes Begum – a serif design brimming with contrast – and the matching Begum Devanagari and Begum Tamil. Like its cousins, the letterforms in the Begum Sans fonts are high-contrast. The horizontal strokes flair outwards and look a little bit like wedges. This is particularly prominent in the typeface’s capital letters. That feature has a long tradition in lettering that even predates typography. Similar wedge-shaped horizontal strokes were prominent features on Florentine inscriptional lettering during the Renaissance.
Begum2
The Begum Sans fonts each include several OpenType features. For instance, they have two different versions of the ‘H’, ‘K’, ‘M’, ‘g’, ‘k’, and ‘y’. Begum Sans’s alternate ‘H’ has a flared horizontal stroke inside its counterform. The alternate ‘K’ and ‘k’ are more diagonal than horizontal in the middle part of the letter, where the three strokes join together. A similar effect is in play with the typeface’s alternate ‘y’. The standard Begum Sans ‘M’ has splayed legs, while the alternate’s exterior legs are straight-sided. The default ‘g’ in Begum Sans is single-storey, but there is double-storey alternate in the fonts, too. 
In terms of its optimal range of sizes, Begum Sans is a display face. This doesn’t mean that its effectiveness is only limited to headlines, however. The typeface’s proportions offer possibilities for many kinds of shorter-length texts, i.e., call-outs, packaging design and the multi-line article introductions that are common in print and on screen. Like the rest of the Begum type system, Begum Sans was designed in India by Manushi Parikh. The original Diodrum was designed by Jeremie Hornus, Alisa Nowak and Clara Jullien, however, Diodrum Rounded was designed by Manushi Parikh and Diodrum Condensed was designed by Barbara Bigosinska