A classic “American” sans serif with a kink
Desphalia belongs to the kind of sans serif fonts that were created in the 19th century. You could also name it “American Gothic”, a sans serif in the style of fonts like Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and similar. Above all, the high x-height characterizes this typeface style, as do the identical heights of uppercase and ascenders.
However, I allowed myself a few peculiarities 😉
On the one hand, there is the gently sloping horizontal middle line on letters such as H, E, F, A and e. The M also got gently slanted sides. Some of the lower-case letters have an up- or down-stroke: a d m n p u. This "kink" on the shaft also serves to better distinguish the small l from the capital I — as can be seen clearly with the term »Illinois«.
Oblique: In keeping with the tradition of American typefaces, Desphalia does not have a true italic. Rather, the letters of the “Italic” have the same character forms as the normal upright variant, but in oblique — and so it is not called “Italic” but “Oblique”.
Style Set 01: Another American peculiarity is the capital I with dashes above and below. It is included in the Desphalia as an alternate character form. An alternative small l with the “kink” in the ascender is also included — as is a y with the “kink” in the descender.
Style Set 02: The corresponding “straight” forms a d l m n p u without the break are included as alternatives in a separate style set.
Small caps: Uppercase letters that are optically the same size as lowercase letters offer a very classy way of emphasis.
Desphalia is available in the widths Condensed, Normal and Expanded, the weights include Thin, Light, Book, Bold, Black.
Using the variable font, all intermediate levels can be freely selected.
The figures are optionally available as tabular figures, proportional lining figures or old style figures.
