Giorgio, like the fashion models that it shares space with in T, the New York Times fashion magazine, is brutal in its demands.
It is a shockingly beautiful typeface, one so arresting that I stopped turning the page when I first saw it a Sunday morning about a year ago. Commissioned from Christian Schwartz and used by Chris Martinez and his staff at T, Giorgio exudes pure sex and competes with the photographs beside it. The designers at T were clearly unafraid of what it demands from the typographer and, over the past year, kept on finding ways to push Giorgio to its limit. Extremely well drawn in its details, full of tension between contrast and grace, it is a typeface that demands to be given space, to be used with wit and courage, and for the typographer to be unafraid in making it the page. Now that Giorgio is for sale to the general public, any designer can discover if they can can use such a demandingly beautiful thing as well as T did.
Ben Kiel is a graduate of the MA in Typeface Design program at Reading and recently joined the type design staff at House Industries.