Banco™

"Banco was the first of French designer Roger Excoffon's types released by the Fonderie Olive in 1952. Often compared to Neuland, the strong forms of Banco look not so much carved out of wood but rolled out of sheet metal. The tapering strokes of Banco are all very upright, like a series of abrupt downstrokes made with a precise, sharp-edged, perfectly defined brush. The shapes of the counters are suggested by the placement of the curves and straight lines, many of which do not actually touch. The slight slant of all the letters, the varying heights of the upper ends of strokes, and the subtle interplay of taper and curve give Banco a distinct up-and-to-the-right motion. Like almost all of Excoffon's typefaces, Banco has the effect of being quickly sketched by a forceful hand. Unlike Mistral and Choc, however, Banco was originally an all-caps typeface; Excoffon made no attempt to design a lowercase. In designing Banco Light for text settings, Phill Grimshaw's first task was to create a lowercase alphabet. He then decided that he would also try a lowercase for the original weight as well. Using the existing caps as a ""clean, positive model on which to base an interpreted lowercase,"" Grimshaw deliberately ""under-designed"" the lowercase, ""in order to produce a consistent 'color,' while maintaining the simple letterforms evident in the original."" In creating Banco Light, Grimshaw found that what preserved the characteristics of Banco best in a lighter weight was to make it quite narrow, almost condensed; this way he could keep the same angles between strokes that Excoffon had used in the original face. "