You have written that Mrs Eaves was in a sense a revival of Baskerville. Does Mr Eaves carry the Baskerville tradition forward in a similar way, despite it’s being a sans?
With Mr Eaves, we’ve taken quite a big step away from the original Baskerville. Mrs Eaves was already a significant diversion from Baskerville, and we based Mr Eaves on Mrs Eaves. The reduced contrast that we introduced with Mrs Eaves is there in Mr Eaves as well. It was never our intention to make a Baskerville Sans. Instead we were curious about applying the proportions, armature and spacing of Mrs Eaves to a sans serif model. We did some initial tests and really liked the effect.
When you created Mr Eaves, did you anticipate it would be used together with Mrs Eaves in a traditional serif/sans pairing? Do you have advice for combining them?
The two fonts were definitely created to work together, and we think they work well in combination. And there is a sufficient range of weights in both fonts to create a nice contrast between, let’s say, headlines and text. But when it comes to pairing fonts, we believe it’s not so much which fonts you combine, but how you use the fonts in combination. We’ve actually just released a new type catalog to illustrate that point. You can request a copy at our site.
However, after all these years of producing and distributing typefaces, we no longer anticipate any kind of particular usage of our typefaces. It always completely surprises us how people use our fonts. We often see combinations we had never anticipated and it usually brings a smile to our faces. We provide the typefaces, which are the building bricks. But designers are the architects — they use them and combine them into layouts and designs and make them look wonderful.
How would you characterize the reaction to Mr Eaves since its release? Have there been uses that especially impressed you?
The most immediate reaction to any font release that we can measure are sales numbers, and Mr Eaves has sold very well so far. It has really surprised us, because there are so many great sans serifs available. Seeing it in use, however, always takes a while. We did have a very interesting experience when Rudy and I visited the Maira Kalman exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. We walk in, and they have this large text printed on the wall in red in what looks like a traditional sans serif. And as we start reading, we notice all kinds of quirky details we hadn’t seen in any other standard sans serif, and we realize we’re reading Mr Eaves!
This happens occasionally. And every time it happens we’re always a bit perplexed. Because we try to make these fonts as unique as possible, yet we want them to be legible and subservient to the text and not stand out too much. So when our typefaces trick us like that, by appearing so common at first sight yet recognizable as a unique font with specific quirks, we feel we’ve done a pretty good job.
Mr Eaves is available in Sans and Modern and XL Sans and Modern, in various packages including OpenType.
Zuzana Licko is the cofounder (with her partner Rudy VanderLans) of Emigre, a digital type foundry, publisher and distributor of graphic design-related software and printed materials. Licko is a celebrated typeface designer and occupies a special place in the history of design in the digital age. She is also the creator of original handmade ceramics, which along with her library of typefaces, are available at Emigre.com
