Thitawan Noenpoempisut

At TypeParis, we had the opportunity to visit many incredible libraries and explore a wide range of typographic history books. We encountered a variety of type styles that evolved over time, including rare and remarkable books from the 15th to 19th centuries featuring an impressive array of historical typefaces. One of the most fascinating discoveries for me was the collection of historical calligraphy books at the Typofonderie library. These references inspired me to explore a broader range of unique curves and strokes in my own work.
During the first week of TypeParis, we also practiced humanistic calligraphy, which I really enjoyed. That experience motivated me to delve deeper into this tradition and begin creating a new humanist serif text typeface, distinct from my initial week-one exercises.

I designed this typeface to serve archival, cultural, and educational purposes. It is intended for use in transcribing historical archives, digitizing letters, or enhancing public history websites that showcase historical or translated texts, as well as in book design. This typeface plays a practical role in retypesetting or digital applications for educational, cultural, and contemporary use. It offers high legibility while preserving nostalgic, human qualities and emotional, historical depth for the audience. Humanistic calligraphy was the perfect foundation for this project.

And then the fun part began… the process of creating Tylar.
It’s a long journey to summarize, yet I enjoyed every moment of it. I first revisited the calligraphy practice we did during the first week and used it as the starting point for developing Tylar. This time, I experimented with drawing at different sizes. Instead of working at a 7cm height as before, I drew at 1.5cm, and began noticing details I hadn't seen previously. Some letterforms became more angular and sharp at this smaller scale, which I felt provided a strong foundation for the overall design.
I scanned and scaled the calligraphy, then traced key letters, such as n, p, e, f, c, and r, on tracing paper to test the initial concept. I refined the forms by removing certain elements to improve legibility, lowering the contrast, and widening the overall proportions. For the serifs, I retained a calligraphy-inspired shape and opted for asymmetrical serifs with angular cuts. This gave the typeface a unique personality while still supporting high readability.

Next, I moved into Glyphs and drew five masters: Regular, Black, Black High Contrast (my creative master), Regular High Contrast, and Italic. From these four upright masters, I was able to interpolate six weights and three styles (18 fonts), plus an additional Regular Italic, making a total of 19 styles!

Throughout the development process, we were supported by all the TypeParis instructors as well as international type critics. Their valuable feedback helped me make thoughtful improvements along the way. I frequently revisited their comments and refined the design accordingly to reach the final version you see today.

I want to thank all of my teachers for their unwavering support, patience, and for sharing their knowledge and expertise. I’ve grown immensely over these six weeks, not only in type design, but as a life-long learner. I looked forward to every class, knowing I would learn something new each day. I’ve gained so much more than I expected, and I will always cherish the experience this summer gave me.
I LOVE TYPEPARIS.

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