Scotus Sans

Scotus Sans is a low-contrast sanserif family available in a wide range of weights and styles. It performs excellently for long reading text in printing and on web pages, as well as on any kind of screen and device. Its name and its overall proportions come from a highly successful roman type which first appeared in the printing office of Octavianus Scotus, in Venice in 1481 – about ten years after Nicolas Jenson’s masterful roman type.

Among the many imitations of Jenson’s roman available at the time, the roman used by Octavianus Scotus achieved the greatest commercial success. In fact, it was used by more than 100 printers in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Nonetheless, Scotus Sans is not a revival of a 15th-century roman; it is a new sans based on the skeleton of the original roman and embodies ‘simplicity of form which does not reject traditional forms’ while maintaining ‘clarity and readability’.

Galli, Olocco and Perondi designed Scotus Sans following in the footsteps of early 20th-century milestones such as Edward Johnston’s typeface for the London Underground and notably Monotype Sans Serif no. 231 (later known as Gill Sans), in which the designer tried ‘to work out the norm of plain letters’. But unlike Johnston and Gill, they focused on a specific model and studied the original Scotus roman from a number of books. Through a process of rationalisation and simplification, the rough printed marks of Scotus roman were forged into a digital sanserif ranging from thin to black, from compressed to expanded. They also added a matching italic to the roman: with a 10° angle and slightly condensed letterforms, it has a personality of its own. The result is Scotus Sans, an extensive humanistic sanserif family that looks sleekly contemporary and classical at the same time. [c-a-s-t.com]