sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
of the
geometric style
Geometric art is a phase of Greek art, characterized largely by geometric motifs in vase painting, that flourished towards the end of the Greek Dark Ages and a little later, . Its center was in Athens, and from there the style spread among the ...
Turin
Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...
,
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
from around 1928.
Semplicità, named for the Italian for "simplicity", is an example of the new wave of "geometric" sans-serifs such as Erbar and Futura appearing in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These designs were based on the proportions of the circle and the square and the influence of
Roman square capitals
Roman square capitals, also called ''capitalis monumentalis'', inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and ''capitalis quadrata'', are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters. Square capitals are characterized ...
, breaking from traditional "grotesque" designs of the nineteenth century. Semplicità, however, has a number of unusual features, including a 'U' with an angle, following the classical model, and an 'f' which descends below the baseline. It is also a "spurless" design, similar to the contemporary
Bernhard Gothic
Bernhard Gothic is a family of geometric sans serif typeface designed by Lucian Bernhard in 1929 for the American Type Founders (ATF). Five variations by Bernhard were introduced over two years:
* ''Bernhard Gothic Medium'' (1929)
* ''Bernhar ...
and more recently
FF Dax
FF Dax is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hans Reichel, published by FontFont library. The typeface is popular in advertising and in marketing. It is a "spurless" sans-serif, similar to typefaces like Semplicità and some characters ...
, in which most strokes end without terminals. These features give Semplicità an appearance similar to some of the flamboyant, modernist
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...
lettering of the period.
The design of Semplicità has sometimes been credited to type designer Alessandro Butti, but Colizzi and Olocco do not credit it to a single designer, although Butti may have been the final draughtsman.
Digitisations are available in commercial releases from Durotype and Canada Type, and an open-source version (shown) from Studio Di Lena, who require attribution as a condition of its use. A proprietary digitisation has also been used by the French clothing company
Céline
Céline, sometimes spelled Celine, is a French female first name version of Latin origin, coming from ''Caelīna'', the feminine form of the Roman cognomen ''Caelīnus'', meaning "heavenly".