Elsa Drevous

‍

Myrina is a display typeface with 5 weights, ranging from Light to Black, with an Italic version. It is largely inspired by the Bastarda blackletters.

‍

As a starting point for my brief, I decided to create a display typeface for a fashion designer brand, that creates clothing and accessories made of chainmail.

‍

Featuring this medieval material to represent feminine empowerment and strength was the driving concept of the design. The global identity results in a powerful designs, creating a fusion of medieval history with a contemporary approach.

The name of the typeface comes from Greek mythology. Myrina was a queen of the Libyan Amazons. According to Diodorus, the Libyan Amazons were the most ancient of all, and preceded the arrival of the Amazons of Asia Minor. They would have surpassed them in their exploits but their nation died out several centuries before the Trojan war.

The Myrina typeface combines organic shapes and calligraphic curves, with minimalist lines and sharp angles. The structure of the letters follows a broad nib pen ductus, resulting of strong contrasts. The type family also features 26 alternates caps (from Light to Black) created with lively calligraphic shapes. These special glyphs allow the graphic designers to play with an infinite combination of letter layouts—such as accessories in the fashion industry. These alternates have been created to add a strong gothic identity, with a unique, extravagant touch.

‍

Creating the alternates was one of the most challenging parts of the process; trying to find wild shapes while keeping consistency with the regular glyphs was not easy. The other challenge was to find the right balance between having an angular and contrasted font, without ending up with too-complex letters.

‍

Thanks to all the teacher’s reviews, I understand that every letter doesn’t have to have a strong personality: they should all exist to enhance one another.This is the most important thing I learned during this programme; we need to consider letters as a group, not individuals. Additionally, applying our typeface in the right graphic environment with the correct words helped immensely to capture the letters’ global identity.

‍