Lyon Italique

Lyon Italique is a historically aware cursive that is based on the Cicero Première Italique (1548), the Gros Romain Italique (1547) and the Cicero Droite (1565) of Robert Granjon. It has strong calligraphic influences, but these tendencies are incorporated as abstract interpretations of the pen strokes: sharp corners and straight lines give the typeface an interesting tension between its calligraphic heritage and a very contemporary adaptation of it without sacrificing the natural flow and of the typeface.

This tension between artistic expression and analytical abstraction, a sort of romantic perfectionism, is also found in the melancholic temperament of the humoral theory.

Lyon Italique currently features already more than 130 alternates, ligatures and swash characters that give an artistic expression to the text, all of which are automatically replaced through intelligent Opentype routines that also help to avoid most collisions and incorrect usages like a long s at the end of a word, or overlapping swashes.