About Alias Didot

Alias Didot was a proposal for a redesign of a fashion magazine. The client had reference for a few upper case characters of a condensed Didot, and wanted to explore developing these into a font. Having done some quick online research there interestingly didn't seem to be such a type available. Typefaces such as Ambroise were close in style but with an extra softness, such as in the bracketed serifs in its upper case. As well as its condensed shape this type was to have a sparse severity, such as the sharp angular connection between vertical and horizontal.

In many ways the type isn't a Didot at all, the italic in particular jumbles styles, the numerals swap between Didot, Bodoni and made-up shapes. For the bold weights the idea was simply to increase line weight and ball terminals at the same-ish ratio (they are normally reduced), while maintaining the condensed character shape as much as possible.

The result is that the Bold and Black weights get quite compressed and the type takes on a different character, that of more expressively, robustly graphic Modern and Fat Face forms. The Black weight in particular has the spirit of having been drawn in 1970s New York, maybe by Herb Lubalin.

Designers:

Gareth Hague

Year: 2026

Formats: TTF, WOFF2

Tagged with: <High Contrast> <Italic> <Editorial> <Didone> <Compressed> <Condensed> <Medium x-Height>