Stinger Font Family:Since their first appearance as Italians on the pages of William Caslon’s type specimens in 1821, reverse-contrast serifs have been typography’s most beloved pariahs. By subverting the traditional relationship between thick verticals and thin horizontals, they are perfect for grabbing attention in advertising. The unexpected contrasts and thick slabs produced by reverse-contrast serifs became ubiquitous in period posters and synonymous with Wild West and circus iconography.
In designing Stinger, the Zetafonts team of Maria Chiara Fantini, Andrea Tartarelli, and Francesco Canovaro, and orchestrated by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini, decided to marry this subversive tradition with the approach of modernist sans-serifs like Univers, developing a superfamily with four widths, each in five different weights, from light to heavy. This gives the designer a full range of options for typesetting, with Normal and Fit widths offering two different text size alternatives, the wide width adding display and titling options, and the slim width ready to meet the space-saving needs of extremely long texts. True italics have been added to all weights and variants, bringing the Stinger family to a total of 40 fonts, with an extended Latin + Russian Cyrillic character set covering over 200 languages, and open character features including position numbers, stylistic games, and alternate forms.
In the crowded landscape of contemporary grotesque typefaces, all of which aim for geometric perfection, Stinger stands out for its bold choices and strong personality. From calligraphy-inspired endings in light weights to the ready-to-use sculptural approach in heavy weights, each variant manages to stand out without forgetting the lessons of legibility and flexibility from reverse-contrast modern classics such as those designed by Excoffon or Novarese. A variable version is included in the full family, allowing the designer maximum flexibility and control over the Stinger superfamily’s wide range of expressive capabilities.
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