Gieo Text is the debut release of type designer Linh Nguyễn’s fledgling ÁccentiaType foundry. What began during her MA in Type Design is now published as a fresh and lively take on the classic humanist serif — the serif typeface with the oldest of pedigrees. So, after 500 years, is there anything to add? Gieo Text says yes.
Spirited Away
Gieo Text is a roman with unambiguous traces of its distant calligraphic origins, most explicitly realized in its stroke modulation, gently bowed stems, and subtle slant that echoes a writing hand and lends the design its left-to-right motion. In a recent comment about Gieo Text, type designer Hannes Famira captured the essence of this typeface when he called it “spirited.” Indeed, it’s a typeface with a latent energy, like a runner on the blocks or, to mix & mangle a metaphor (sorry, Adam Smith), an invisible hand teasing the eye from word to word. The asymmetrical serif structure is yet another ingredient to the design’s rightward motion — with contrasting and alternating bracketed and unbracketed serifs.
The design’s most significant departure from its Renaissance or Early Modern roots is found in its fluid and thoroughly modern italics and, of course, in the overall more generous x-height, an obsession with type designers since the latter decades of the twentieth century.
Unsurprisingly, Gieo Text supports Vietnamese, and if you’re a designer wondering how to approach Vietnamese diacritics in a serif design, then let this typeface be your Virgil.
Pronounced zeo or jee-o, meaning “to sow” in Vietnamese, Gieo Text has reading in its DNA. The heavier weights, not necessary for typical extended texts will come into their own in editorial design. Available in six weights, this is an accomplished and thoroughly modern take on the classic text typeface.
