Creating New Precedents with 「SD GretaSans」
Typotheque, a leading font foundry representing the Netherlands, boasts a diverse range of multilingual font families. Among them, 「Greta Sans」 is well-known for supporting various languages and weights. In October 2020, in collaboration with Sandoll, they created the Korean font family 「Sandoll GretaSans」.
「Sandoll GretaSans」 has demonstrated its versatility since its release, from being prominently used for titles on book covers and posters to handling lengthy texts on websites as body text. Already well-received, Sandoll continues to explore ways to enhance font usability to further increase user satisfaction.
Although many ideas were discussed, considering feasibility, opinions converged into two main points. The first was the addition of an Italic style to better express hierarchies of information. The second was the development of variable fonts to cater to users seeking more precise weight adjustments beyond the existing 10 weights.
This article delves into detailing the new font family 「SD GretaSans」 including the addition of italics. It may seem easy to simply add italics to the already developed 「Sandoll GretaSans」. However, the process of releasing 「SD GretaSans」 was much more challenging.
*Starting from March 2023, Sandoll has changed the brand designation of its fonts from 'Sadoll' to 'SD'. This branding will be applied to fonts released after March 2023.
Optimizing the Use of Italics
A key feature of 「SD GretaSans」, released in March 2023, is the addition of Latin italics. The added Latin italics underwent adjustments to increase their size by 125%. This adjustment was necessary to harmonize punctuation and typographic elements with both Korean and Latin scripts in mixed text settings.
*Typotheque’s 「Greta Sans」 italics were designed by Peter Bil'ak and released in 2012.
In fact, adjusting the Latin italics was the most challenging aspect when releasing 「SD GretaSans」. Italics have a slanted style commonly used in Latin characters but not typically used in Korean script.
The font ‘Dalseul’ by Sandoll’s Designer Kim Seulki is a vertical writing font based on the Chosun-era serif style. While it is possible to consider Korean ‘heulim’ styles similar to Latin italics, it is difficult to say they are fully standardized like Latin italics. However, as many font designers continue to ponder the various standardizations of Korean fonts, 「SD GretaSans」 could also include Korean italics someday.
If no adjustments were needed, we could have simply maintained the italic optimized by Typotheque for Latin and released it. However, what Sandoll's designers considered crucial was how actual font users would employ it.
While we couldn't examine every domestic publication, we reviewed as many cases as possible. In summary, recent trends with Latin italics showed they were used more often either alongside Latin or independently, rather than in conjunction with Korean.
Accordingly, the italic in 「SD GretaSans」 was configured in a direction optimized for standalone Latin use. Some punctuation adjustments harmonized with Korean were provided as additional glyphs. When setting the language in InDesign to Korean, it automatically switches to the adjusted italic for easier use.
From top to bottom, here is an example typeset with Korean and punctuation, Latin and punctuation, and Latin italic with Korean language settings. Depending on the user's intent, punctuation adjusted for Korean size and position can be utilized for harmony with Korean, while default punctuation can be used when setting Latin italic for optimized typesetting in English. In programs other than InDesign, this isn't automatically changed based on language settings but is provided as alternate glyphs.
The New Font Family 「SD GretaSans」
We also needed to consider the manner of releasing the fonts. We had to decide whether to add Latin italics to the 「Sandoll Greta Sans」 released in 2020, or to launch it as a new font family called 「SD GretaSans」. If we only consider expandability, adding italics to the existing font would be the logical choice.
However, we couldn't overlook the issue of excessively increasing the weights from 10 to 20 if we included Latin italics. From the perspective of enhancing font usability, we also needed to respect the usability of the minority of users who wouldn't use Latin italics. As a result, Sandoll decided to gather opinions and release the new family 「SD GretaSans」.
Comparison of Font List Images in InDesign with Italic. For a richer typesetting experience with italics, it's more convenient to use the left 「SD GretaSans」, whereas for simpler tasks without italics, the right 「Sandoll Greta Sans」 is more suitable.
Given the tumultuous release process, let's summarize the features of 「SD GretaSans」, which encapsulates various meanings:
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It is a new font family with 20 weights, including the Latin italics added to all weights released in 2020 as 「Sandoll Greta Sans」.
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It supports Latin italic glyphs optimized for Latin and Korean respectively, considering various user environments.
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It was released as a new font family distinct from 「Sandoll Greta Sans」, considering users with low usage of Latin italics.
Furthermore, 「SD GretaSans」 is not stopping here but is also undergoing variable font development as the final piece of usability expansion. We are diligently preparing to present a more novel appearance in the near future. With the completion of variable fonts, we anticipate users will be more satisfied with its usage flexibility.
Written by: Sandoll Product Planning Team, Kim Chorong