One day — while looking for an idea of a new typeface, — Yury Ostromentsky walked into a pavilion of Marseille tide gauge (marégraphe in French), a coastal station that has been daily measuring the change in sea level since the late 19th century. On the wall of the pavilion, he found a text with unusual details. Yury noticed low contrast and close proportions of that typeface, and remembered the age-relevant French lettering. And then — as he tends to do! — Ostromentsky mixed slightly insane graphics of historic prototypes with his own wild preferences in letterforming and, armed with this blend, started working on a modern serif.
The serif turned out sharp and concise, coming in the range of 20 styles — from small size text (Caption) to super-display (Poster) — plus a variable font. Maregraphe offers an impressive case: small caps; regular, tabular and text figures (with currency signs, mathematical symbols and punctuation for each set); circled figures; indexes; arrows.
Alternative symbols deserve your particular attention — they are capable of driving a rather reserved basic setting up to the emotional passion of the prototype, or even make it sound louder.
Besides Ostromentsky, the team working on Maregraphe included Mikhail Strukov and Ilya Ruderman; mastering was done by Ro Hernández, and kerning — by Igino Marini.
Small capitals, case sensitive forms, standard ligatures, proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, tabular lining figures, tabular oldstyle figures, ordinals, fractions, denominator, numerator, subscript / inferiors, superscript / superiors, seven stylistic sets
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