ITC Rastko
ITC Rastko began as a series of initial letters for a book of poetry. Serbian designer Olivera Stojadinovic had been working with a small publishing house creating a special series of books under the “Masterpieces” brand. Her goal was to draw a new set of initial letters for each book. ITC Rastko, named after the Serbian poet Rastko Petrovic, was a project that required initial letters for the entire alphabet. Once Stojadinovic had drawn the majority of the capital letters, she realized that a companion lowercase would make a distinctive script typeface.
Sketches of the letters were drawn quickly with a pointed pen. Stojadinovic then refined these, keeping the spontaneous, hand-drawn quality. Capitals are wide and flourished, while the lowercase letters are more condensed and subdued. It’s no surprise that the capitals also make great initial letters.
ITC Aspera
ITC Aspera is the product of graphic experimentation. Olivera Stojadinovic, who designed the face, recalls, “Over the last 15 years, I have made several small prints using Cyrillic characters. Often, I made my first sketches with a special pointed brush which was difficult to manipulate well, but once tamed, gave me interesting results.” Stojadinovic decided to see if she could reproduce the unique brush quality in digital form.
"The idea was to preserve the look of strokes made by my brush, so I kept the scanned shapes as close as possible to the originals, making interventions just to maintain consistent proportions, slope and weight." While this typeface is not a connecting script, Stojadinovic did create a number of letters, such as the ‘o’ and ‘s’ that are natural connecting characters. She also drew a set of ligatures and matching ornaments to accompany the design.