Semplicità is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

of the

geometric style Geometric art is a phase of Greek art, characterized largely by geometric motifs in vase painting, that flourished towards the end of the Greek Dark Ages, . Its center was in Athens, and from there the style spread among the trading cities of the ...

. It was published by the Nebiolo type foundry of

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

from around 1928. Semplicità, named for the Italian for "simplicity", is an example of the new wave of "geometric" sans-serifs such as Erbar and Futura appearing in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These designs were based on the proportions of the circle and the square and the influence of

Roman square capitals Roman square capitals, also called ''capitalis monumentalis'', inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and ''capitalis quadrata'', are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters. Square capitals are characterize ...

, breaking from traditional "grotesque" designs of the nineteenth century. Semplicità, however, has a number of unusual features, including a 'U' with an angle, following the classical model, and an 'f' which descends below the baseline. It is also a "spurless" design, similar to the contemporary

Bernhard Gothic Bernhard Gothic is a family of geometric sans serif typeface designed by Lucian Bernhard in 1929 for the American Type Founders (ATF). Five variations by Bernhard were introduced over two years: * ''Bernhard Gothic Medium'' (1929) * ''Bernhard ...

and more recently

FF Dax FF Dax is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hans Reichel, published by FontFont library. The typeface is popular in advertising and in marketing. It is a "spurless" sans-serif, similar to typefaces like Semplicità and some characters in ...

, in which most strokes end without terminals. These features give Semplicità an appearance similar to some of the flamboyant, modernist

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

lettering of the period. The design of Semplicità has sometimes been credited to type designer

Alessandro Butti Alessandro Butti (b. 1893 – d. 1959 in Turin) was an Italian type designer who lived and worked mostly in Turin where he was art director of the Nebiolo type foundry. He also taught at the Scuola Vigliani-Paravia. Microgramma is his most fa ...

, but Colizzi and Olocco do not credit it to a single designer, although Butti may have been the final draughtsman. Digitisations are available in commercial releases from Durotype and Canada Type, and an open-source version (shown) from Studio Di Lena, who require attribution as a condition of its use. A proprietary digitisation has also been used by the French clothing company

Céline Céline, sometimes spelled Celine, is a French female first name of Latin origin, coming from ''Caelīna'', the feminine form of the Roman cognomen ''Caelīnus'', meaning "heavenly".

Styles

Semplicità was sold in a wide range of weights. Leonardo Di Lena lists the following styles in a Nebiolo catalogue: * 501-00 serie tonda chiara normale (light regular) * 501-01 serie tonda chiara stretta (light condensed) * 501-05 serie corsiva chiara normale (light italic) * 501-06 serie corsiva chiara stretta (light italic condensed) * 501-10 serie tonda neretta normale (medium) * 501-11 serie tonda neretta stretta (medium condensed) * 501-15 serie corsiva neretta normale (medium italic) * 501-16 serie corsiva neretta stretta (medium italic condensed) * 501-20 serie tonda nera normale (bold) * 501-21 serie tonda nera stretta (bold condensed) * 501-25 serie corsiva nera normale (bold italic) * 501-26 serie corsiva nera stretta (bold italic condensed) In addition, some

swash capitals A swash is a typography, typographical flourish, such as an exaggerated serif, terminal, tail, entry stroke, etc., on a glyph. The use of swash characters dates back to at least the 16th century, as they can be seen in Ludovico Vicentino degli A ...

were offered and a shadowed capital face, Ombra, not to be confused with the similar Umbra font offered by Ludlow.

References

{{notelist, 30em

External links

Specimen book

Typophile discussion thread

Archivio Tipografico

Geometric sans-serif typefaces Nebiolo typefaces