Call me old-fashioned, but I cannot get enough satisfaction from the heavy, block serif vintage poster type Steam. Designed by Mirela Belova and Stan Partalev, in a 19th-century Italianate exaggerated style, this font speaks to my inner cowboy. Steam Basic caps are composed of two consistent weights, thick and heavy blocks connected by lightweight lines. Many of the letters, including A and Y, M and N, are reminiscent of a typical family tree or organizational chart – where connections are made from lines attaching one box to another. The Steam family is a startlingly elegant version of an otherwise clunky, Wild West wanted poster serif, made even more functional and handsome by the stylistic permutations of the typeface, especially in lowercase.
Steam Shadow and Steam Diamonds are particularly good for 3D illusions – the serifs are designed to suggest the look and feel of gemstones. Every font family member variation has an outline version as well. These provide enough alternatives to ensure that the typeface is adaptable for many kinds of messaging needs.
Steam is designed so that the upper and lower slabs rest on the same top-and-bottom grid. In other words, when setting lines of words, there is a clear, negative space or tunnel that cuts through the middle of every word in upper and lower case. This makes for a startling highway (or rather, eye-way) when reading lines of type.
Steam is best when used for display. But surprisingly, despite thin strokes, when the Basic version is reduced to 16 or 17 points, it is perfectly, as well as pleasurably, readable for short texts and blurbs. So, you see that my affection for this type design does not really imply “old-fashioned”; rather, let’s call it “odd-fashioned” since Steam offers a lot of possibilities for quirky contemporary applications.
| Font of the Month: Steam | |
|---|---|
| Designers: Mirela Belova, Stan Partalev |
Foundry: Type Forward |
Steven Heller is nothing short of a legend in the design community. Award-winning graphic designer, author and editor of hundreds of books (yes, 100s!) and one of the world’s foremost authorities on graphic design history; and arguably its best design commentator. Follow Steven on the must-read The Daily Heller and read his latest book, Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York.
