Ritualist by Justin Penner takes inspiration from high-contrast wedge serif designs, like the 19th century typeface De Vinne, but viewed through a macabre lens. This seriously fas­cinating design is defined by its infinitely sharp points, and some dangerous curves that accelerate like the edge of a blade.

Oc­cupying a sur­repti­tious space between beauty and darkness, Ritualist is elegant, al­luring, vaguely exotic, and don’t look now but it might be suspiciously watching from across the street.

The family com­prises 18 styles (9 weights plus italics), and has a Variable ver­sion. The expansive set of over 1,000 glyphs in Ritualist makes it usable in hun­dreds of languages around the world, including full Vietnamese support, and support for languages that have local style preferences like Polish, Catalan, Marshallese, Romanian, Sami, and numerous African languages. The glyph repertoire also includes many IPA characters, thus enabling support for many indigenous languages in North America and elsewhere.

Use Ritualist as your new secret weapon when the creative brief requires your designs to give vibes of in­trigue, darker desires, and mys­tical en­coun­ters. Set it large for arresting headlines and titles that dominate while preserving the mood with middle range of weights for subheads and brief bits of copy. Careful though, you may become obsessed with Ritualist — or so we hope.