Azuro is a beautiful, readable type family with a basic four weights. Designed with on-screen legibility in mind, it is surprisingly warm and friendly, and has some utterly gorgeous characters in it – I don’t mind admitting I bought it initially because I liked the cursive ‘k’ – but the whole typeface is so well designed I’ve since been using it for all my writing.
Characters in Azuro are unambiguous. There are generous open counters and the numbers are old style but subtly so, crossing the baseline and x-heights barely more than a couple of stroke-widths – just enough for a little liveliness and character. It’s that subtlety that really makes Azuro work. The goal was to create a legible typeface for both reading and writing. It’s apparent in the technical brilliance of clean, crisp outlines and perfect hinting for readability. Azuro also shows consideration for those using it for long periods, with deadlines, late nights and all that goes with the demands of writing. It’s a typeface that lets you get on with the job of writing but has enough character to provide pleasure to the process.
This is a webfont release at heart (see it in use at fontblog.de), and in time I can see Azuro being used in place of Verdana, Arial or Helvetica – it’s got more character and is more readable than any of them. And yes, I still love that cursive ‘k’.
