Essonnes Font

James Hultquist-Todd developed Essonnes from an interest in the experimental forms of nineteenth-century Didot type. The creator dates the first draft to 2011 and the released family to 2015. Particular alternate letters in Pierre Didot’s 1819 type helped initiate the project. Rather than limiting the result to a historical facsimile, JTD designed Essonnes as a contemporary system that addresses different reading sizes and present-day production conditions.

Read the publisher’s family page for the source account and the edition currently offered. Keep a family name distinct from its particular release, width or optical branch.

Essonnes contains sixteen styles across Headline, Display and Text optical designs. JTD explains that these were drawn for their individual roles, including changes in character proportions, rather than created by adjusting contrast alone. Small capitals, numeral options and stylistic sets extend the system. Alternate forms for letters including g, s and y reflect the historical starting point, while remaining optional choices rather than being imposed on every ordinary word in the text.

Use the original publisher specimen to inspect those features. An alternative can share a broad role without having the same letter shapes, metrics or character coverage.

Set a magazine opening with a large feature title, a medium deck and a reading paragraph. Use the relevant optical design for each role before comparing weights. Try one historical alternate in the title, keeping the paragraph in a quieter default setting. Check the smallest punctuation and thin strokes against the real background, then adjust the text size and line length without treating the headline’s proportions as the template for everything.

For independent comparisons, try Playfair Display and Source Serif 4. Use the same wording and approximate output size. The related style guide provides broader design context.

Use JTD to try the original and investigate the files, styles and terms for your intended workflow. This site does not distribute or serve Essonnes font software.

The editable alternatives here have their own source profiles and included licenses. For the difference between a font file and copied characters, read Unicode text versus fonts.