Retros was designed to unite two distinct lettering styles: the fluid, contrasting strokes of broad-nib brush calligraphy and the sharp, precise lines of chiseled stone carving. Retros merges the strength and precision of a chisel carving into stones with the softness of a brush gliding over paper.
The spectacular rhythm of Retros resembles the Soviet book calligraphy from 1950s to the mid-1960s and, at times, cool jazz, Luis Buñuel’s montage techniques, and the stems of wine glasses.
The character proportions were inspired by the calligraphy of East German, Hungarian, and Bulgarian artists of the 1960s, as well as modern English calligraphy. In addition, inscriptions carved on tombstones in Highgate Cemetery, London, influenced the design.
Retros offers a large number of alternates, discretionary ligatures, and two sets of circled figures (white in black circles and black in white circles). Retros supports 288 languages, including Abaza, spoken in Turkey and Karachay-Cherkessia, and Zulu, used by the Nguni people of South Africa.
Standard ligatures, contextual ligatures, proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, fractions, denominator, numerator, five stylistic sets
Afrikaans, Azeri (cyr), Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chechen, Chuvash, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gaelic (Irish), Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ingush, Italian, Kazakh, Kurdish (lat), Kyrghiz, Latvian, Moldavian (cyr), Mongolian (cyr), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Tadzhik, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek (Cyr), Uzbek (lat), and others