ITC Gramophone

Samples:

Vancouver-based type designer Serge Pichii likes to explore decorated, “graphic” letterforms, as he has before in ITC Drycut and especially in ITC Ironwork. With ITC Gramophone, he is celebrating the excesses of 19th-century type. The underlying structure of the lowercase is mostly simple and straightforward, suggesting the blunt-serifed roman letterforms of the 15th century, but with Victorian flourishes like the swash s and z, the g-like tail on the y, and the very unusual flat-topped m. Where the lowercase is quirky, the uppercase is completely over the top: every letter grows curlicues like tendrils, and the Q, R, and even the C sport lightning-flash tails. To a modern eye, Gramophone is a palimpsest of influences - the Victorian mania for decoration on top of the harking back to forms that were antique when this face was new - and Pichii has emphasized this fact by giving the letters a deliberately roughened texture.