FF Kievit is a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

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, ...

Christian Schwartz Christian Schwartz (born December 30, 1977, in Concord, New Hampshire, United States) is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot. Life Schwartz began designing fonts in school. A g ...

and Paul van dan Laan, published by

FontShop International FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renown ...

, and released in 2001. It currently has 18 styles, including 9 weights and true

italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...

, as well as

small caps In typography, small caps (short for small capitals) are grapheme, characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. Small caps are used i ...

and

text figures Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the ...

. It is described as being "ideal for large projects in print and on screen." It features large

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...

as well as open

apertures In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image of ...

, which are optimised for small text sizes. It takes inspiration from a number of classic sans-serif typefaces, such as Frutiger and

Univers Univers () is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a Grotesque (typeface classification), neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-cen ...

, and humanist

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

typefaces including

Garamond Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular to this day and often used for book printing and bod ...

History

Work for FF Kievit began by Mike Abbink when he was a student in design school over a few years and completed at Studio Method Inc. in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The typeface was published by

in 2001. The original typeface family consisted of 12 styles, with six weights: ''Regular'', ''Book'', ''Medium'', ''Bold'', ''Extra Bold'', and ''Black'', but three lighter weights, ''Thin'', ''Extra Light'' and ''Light'', were later added by Paul van der Laan.

Usage

FF Kievit was used as main typeface in

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

in the 2000s.

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

currently uses FF Kievit as main sans-serif typeface along with the serif typeface Lyon.

Westdeutscher Rundfunk (; "West German Broadcasting Cologne"), shortened to WDR (), is a German public broadcasting, public-broadcasting institution based in the States of Germany, Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a const ...

(WDR, a German broadcasting service) also uses a customized version of FF Kievit, called ''WDR Sans''. WDR designed ''WDR Slab'' and ''WDR Serif'', based on FF Kievit, in partnership with Mike Abbink to complete the typeface family.

Variations

* ''FF Kievit Slab'' is a

slab serif In typography, a slab serif (also called ''mechanistic'', ''square serif'', ''antique'' or ''Egyptian'') typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular ( Rockwell), ...

variation of FF Kievit, released on 18 September 2013. Like the original FF Kievit, it also features 18 styles with 9 weights, and multiple OpenType features. * ''FF Kievit Serif'' is a serif variation of FF Kievit, released on 13 August 2019. The variation has 14 styles with 7 weights, and numerous OpenType features. It is inspired by old-style serif fonts, such as

and

Granjon Granjon is an old-style serif typeface designed by George W. Jones around 1924 for the British branch of the Linotype company, and based on the Garamond typeface that was used in a book printed by the Parisian Jean Poupy in 1592. The roman desi ...

Awards

FF Kievit received an award at ISTD TypoGraphic Awards 2001. It was featured on list of

ATypI The ATypI () or Association Typographique Internationale (the International Typography Association) is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to typography and type design. The primary activity of the association is an annual conference ...

's best typefaces from previous century.

References

{{reflist Humanist sans-serif typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2001 FontShop typefaces Unified serif and sans-serif typeface families