Meridian

The almanac that started this family was printed in Porto in 1911 on a press that had already outlived two owners. Its chapter openers were cut by hand, and the compositor — whose name survives only as the initials R.M.V. on the colophon — allowed himself a single indulgence: an italic i in the word for meridian, tilted just far enough to read as a decision rather than an accident.

That tilt is the seed of this typeface. Everything else was rebuilt. The old face had a mean x-height and a spur on the G that collapsed below fourteen point; Meridian Antiqua raises the x-height to 0.492 em, opens the counters, and lets the ascenders run past the cap line by four percent so that lowercase settings keep their sparkle at small sizes.

Weight is drawn, not interpolated blindly. Each of the six masters was corrected by hand at 11 pt on coated stock, and the joins of the a, e and g were redrawn three times in the Bold and Black to keep the ink traps honest under gain. The italic is a true cursive with eleven substituted letterforms, not a slant.

For running text we recommend 9.5 to 11.5 point with line height between 1.55 and 1.7, tracking flat. Above 40 point, switch to the Display optical size and pull tracking to −35 units per thousand. Below 8 point, the Micro size opens spacing and thickens the hairlines by nine percent.