Tremolo

Tremolo is a typeface family that does not leave you indifferent. That’s how I always feel about Nikola Djurek’s work. His ability to explore new territories and styles in every new project is one of the things I most admire about him. (That ability, by the way, appears to be endless.)

In the case of Tremolo, I was captivated by the plasticity of the proposal and the quality and warmth conveyed by its execution. If I were to try to “classify” it, I would say that Tremolo Text’s single weight is based in cursive calligraphy, mixed with the spirit of a condensed blackletter and brush lettering. The Stencil version emphasizes this brush style, and I find the treatment of characters like the lowercase ‘o’ just brilliant. Both are extremely readable, in perfect balance. Both have their Italics, where the slope is only applied to the lowercase.

The Display and its Stencil are monolinear — like skeletons of Tremolo Text — but they radiate great rhythm and warmth, with a touch of handwriting. The accompanying Shadows, A and B, which can be colored separately, emphasize the “sign painting” flavor.

The grand finale is Tremolo Gradient. It simulates the stroke of a thick flat brush, and includes three different levels of gradients with upper and lower parts of the letter that can be assembled together in different colors, allowing the designer to control and play with the decorative effect.

I feel a sense of solidarity with Nikola in this playful side of type design, a kind of author’s caprice that seeks the complicity of designers who are also willing to play.

Laura Meseguer lives in Barcelona, where she works on type design and lettering. A graduate of the Type and Media masters program at KABK, she is also the author of TypoMag, coauthor of Como crear tipografías, and a member of the Type-Ø-Tones foundry, which publishes her own typefaces, such as Typographica favorites Rumba, Magasin and Multi.