I started this typeface design months ago but after chatting to a colleague today, I decided to finish some of the outstanding bits. It’s not ready for release as there are still bits to be refined.
   The idea was to create an aldine text typeface to complement my earlier release, JY Ætna (based on the work of Francesco Griffo).
   Griffo designed Bembo in the fifteenth century. I discovered its usefulness as a text typeface through the old Your Classic magazine and began using it myself for a few clients then. JY Ætna was based (liberally) on the original cut of Bembo, and I used a 14 pt master, which meant that it could be typeset comfortably at larger sizes than the digital versions of Bembo on sale back in the mid-1990s.
   The problem was that JY Ætna was not that great at anything below 10 pt. I used it at the smaller sizes when new but I look back and the ascenders were too high. Basically JY Aristi, as I have called the new work was borne out of necessity and a stubborn preference for my own typefaces rather than someone else’s. It will be my first retail release in many years, too.
   When Kris Sowersby, a fellow typeface designer, mentioned Plantin to me in an email, some of the letters were refined in a Plantin direction—it’s one of my favourites thanks to it being the body typeface for Autocar in the late 1980s.
   JY Aristi might become the text family in Lucire. I just have to make sure I like reading it over long passages of text. I was not happy with the earlier lowercase g, which looks a little prissy and close to my earlier JY Tranquility. The 5 in the illustration above was too heavy and has since been changed. Maybe I will release it in early 2009, but it depends when I have time to do the italics and bolds. Posted by Jack Yan, 10:57  permalink

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