Oculi

  • Display Light
  • Display Light Italic
  • Display Regular
  • Display Regular Italic
  • Display Medium
  • Display Medium Italic
  • Display Bold
  • Display Bold Italic
  • Display Black
  • Display Black Italic
  • Text Regular
  • Text Regular Italic
  • Text Medium
  • Text Medium Italic
  • Text Bold
  • Text Bold Italic
  • Text Black
  • Text Black Italic

Oculi Display Black Italic

Common Honeylocust
BRISTLECONE FIR

Oculi Display Regular

Platanus Occidentalis
AUTUMN WILLOW

Oculi Display Light Italic

Liriodendron Tulipifera
SAND HICKORY

Oculi Display Bold

There are many types and styles of stone carving tools, each carver will decide for themselves which tools to use

Oculi Display Medium Italic

Soft stone such as chalk, soapstone, pumice and Tufa can be easily carved with found items such as harder stone or in the case of chalk even the fingernail

Oculi Display Light Italic

Cold Chisels are predominantly used in Repoussé and chasing processes for the fabrication of bronze and aluminium sculptures

Oculi Text Regular

The old saw has it, “Great oaks from little acorns grow,” and all of us who remember the saying have thus some idea of what the beginning of an oak is. But what of the beginning of the acorn? In a general way, one inferentially supposes that there must be a flower somewhere in the life-history of the towering white oak that has defied the storms of centuries and seems a type of everything sturdy and strong and masculine; but what sort of a flower could one imagine as the source of so much majesty? We know of the great magnolias, with blooms befitting the richness of the foliage that follows them.

Oculi Text Regular Italic

The old saw has it, “Great oaks from little acorns grow,” and all of us who remember the saying have thus some idea of what the beginning of an oak is. But what of the beginning of the acorn? In a general way, one inferentially supposes that there must be a flower somewhere in the life-history of the towering white oak that has defied the storms of centuries and seems a type of everything sturdy and strong and masculine; but what sort of a flower could one imagine as the source of so much majesty? We know of the great magnolias, with blooms befitting the richness of the foliage that follows them.

About Oculi

What if Roman inscriptional lettering had a lowercase? What if its design was meant for running text?

Oculi is inspired by Roman lettering but continues on a hypothetical journey where its source left off. Most Roman-inspired typefaces either ignore the lowercase completely or are really only meant for larger sizes. Oculi imagines what a lowercase would look like if such a thing were designed to match the capital letters and work at smaller sizes.

The basis for such an imagined lowercase don’t pull from anything too specific; the contrast is more like an oldstyle typeface than like a Didot or Bodoni—in keeping with that of the capital letters.

As the weight of the letterforms increases, the serifs stay the same size despite the contrast decreasing. This seems to be the most in keeping with the spirit of the carved letterforms—based on looking through many examples of different Roman lettering.

Since there was no real model for the italics, the design here relies on a change of form to distinguish them from the upright letters. Oculi’s italics are based on the Renaissance italics of Arrighi and Griffo (the sort of designs you would commonly find with an oldstyle typeface.) The italics have a very minor slant of only 4° and rely on the difference in design to make their presence known.

OpenType Features

Default
Activated
Small Caps
abcdefgh
abcdefgh
Tabular Numbers
012345
01234 01234
Oldstyle Numbers
012345
012345
Lining Numbers
012345
012345
Superscript & Subscript
012345
01234567890
Numerator & Denominator
012345
01234567890
Stylistic Set 1
JUST just
JUST just

Design Notes

Oculi has two optical sizes—Display and Text—that have been optimized to work at large and small sizes.
Oculi Display features higher contrast and gently curving strokes. Oculi Text is lower contrast and has straighter strokes, to simplify the letters and increase legibility.
For Oculi Text, the counter sizes have been increased, the spacing has been loosened, and the x-height has gone up.
As the weight increases in Oculi Text, the contrast lowers, in keeping with traditional Roman lettering.
In Oculi Display, the contrast level stays the same as the weight increases, giving it a more delicate, elegant feel.
The slant angle for Oculi’s italics is only 4 degrees. The italic forms take a much more calligraphic form to increase distinction between themselves and the upright letters.
Oculi Italic styles feature more curved forms in characters such as the uppercase Y, B, P, D, & R.

Language Support

  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Algonquin
  • Asturian
  • Basque
  • Bavarian
  • Bemba
  • Bikol
  • Bosnian
  • Breton
  • Catalan
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  • Cornish
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  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Esperanto
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  • French
  • Galician
  • German
  • Greenlandic
  • Hawaiian
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Kurdish
  • Latin
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Luxembourgish
  • Madurese
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  • Maltese
  • Mandinka
  • Māori
  • Norwegian
  • Occitan
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  • Northern Sámi
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  • Strine
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