Typeface Review

Salomé

Reviewed by Dan Mall on March 11, 2014

Didones are back — were they ever really out? — and Salomé is at the front of the pack.

Full of a massive array of ligatures and stylistic alternates, small capitals with variant punctuation, and more superiors / inferiors / fractions / ordinals than you can dance for over dinner, Salomé is a unique, seductive serif family. Honestly, who makes a ‘gf’ ligature? You’ve never before written “dogface” with such style.

But Salomé isn’t your typical Didone. Sure, it has the usual high-contrast forms you’ll see in a Modern serif, but the variation between thicks and thins has been pushed to the extreme. It bucks the standard un­brack­et­ed serifs and instead goes for something much more elegant and gradual.

Another interesting thing about Salomé has nothing to do with its glyph set; it’s the way you can get it. The creators of the typeface, Spanish studio Atipo, are playing with perception of value. You can get Salomé Regular without spending a penny — just spread the word with a mention on Facebook or Twitter. To license the rest of the family, you can pick your price (with a €5 minimum). Is widespread awareness of the typeface and a low choose-your-own price worth just as much the cash they might get from a conventional pricing model? Only time will tell.

All that goodness for the price of a tweet? You’d lose your head.

Dan Mall is a designer and advisor from Philly. He’s the Founder of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that uses Design to help organizations solve complicated problems involving people & devices. Dan is an enthralled husband & dad and co-founder of Typedia and The Businessology Show.

One Comment

  1. I just love this font and I am using it in many recent projects. Glyph set is enormous.

    Although it is pretty bold and dominates the page it has that elegance that you expect from Didone type of fonts.

    Best 5 euros ever spent.

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