Designer: René
BiederThe Novera household is a sharp geometric sans in ten weights plus matching italics, offered in 2 variations-- Modern and Classic. It has a contemporary, friendly and multifunctional yet characteristic style, that comes with a comprehensive glyphs set of 1000+ glyphs per typeface, fulfilling all typographic needs.
The Design
Vertical terminals, circular shapes and angular pinnacles-- Novera truely breathes geometry! But the principle surpasses the application of rational geometry. The intension was to create a highly readable household appropriate for every day usage motivated by the work of Paul Renner, Eric Gill or Jakob Erbar, integrating the geometric with the human and the practical with the non-traditional. Although Novera is motivated by the past, its look is unmistakingly modern.
Modern vs Classic
Novera is offered in two variations - Modern and Classic - born from the same source file but with various characters set as default. This develops subtle however effective differences such as the double-storey a (Novera Modern) which is optimized for legibility in longer text paragraphs, instead of the single-storey a (Novera Classic) which enables a simply geometric appearance. Another distinguishing feature are the ascenders on Novera Mondern, which extend above the cap height for a classy presence, compared to the ascenders on Novera Classic, ending at the cap height, for a compact and helvetica-flavored look. Novera Modern was planned for usage in body copy, whereas Novera Classic was prepared for headings, brief paragraphs or logos, but both versions can be used vice versa too, of course.
Alternate Characters
To preserve neutrality and a modern look, the basic character set largely ignores distinctive forms. This remains in contrast to the alternative forms with the gill-like lowercase letters g and t along with a standard shape of S and the German ligature t/z, which traces back to old German spellings. Also motivated by German poster designs from the early 20th century are the elongated i-dots and dieresis-dots that can produce eye-catchers in headings or logo designs. By the way, both versions, Novera Modern and Classic, can be developed by means of stylistic set 1, 17 and 18.
