This all started with a love for Minister. This is a font designed by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt in 1929. In the specimen booklet, there’s a scan from Linotype’s page many years ago. They no longer carry the font. I’ve gone quite a ways from the original. It was dark and a bit heavy. But I loved the look and the readability.
This came to a head when I started my first book on all-digital printing written from 1994-1995, and published early in 1996. I needed fonts to show the typography I was talking about. At that point oldstyle figures, true small caps, and discretionary ligatures were rare. More than that text fonts for book design had lining OR oldstyle figures, lowercase OR small caps—never both.
So, I designed the Diaconia family using the Greek word for minister. It was fairly rough. I knew very little. I later redesigned and updated Diaconia into Bergsland Pro—released in 2004. It was still rough (though I impressed myself).
Now, with 4-font Biblia Serif family 13 years later, I’ve cleaned up, made the fonts more consistent internally, added more functional OpenType features, and brought the fonts into the 21st century. I used the 2017 set of features: small caps, small cap figures, oldstyle figures, fractions, lining figures, ligatures and discretionary ligatures. These are fonts designed for book production and work well for text or heads.
In 2006, I found myself needing a readable sans serif. So I went to Bergsland Pro, and eliminated the serifs. I named the font Brinar. I kept a flare in place for the serifs and cupped the ends. I was stunned. People loved it. It’s remained my bestseller until very recently.
So, at the end of last year I decided that Brinar really needed some help. The flares were basically random. The stem width and modulation variances all needed to be fixed. My old OpenType feature code was quite limited and clumsy.
So, I designed the 6-font Biblia family. I updated the fonts to the 2017 set of features: small caps, small cap figures, oldstyle figures, fractions, lining figures, ligatures and discretionary ligatures. These are fonts designed for book production and work well for text or heads.
My original plan was to simply update Brinar. But, the serif version was sitting there on my computer, with the same metrics. So, I redid Biblia Serif also. They work flawlessly together.
