The Letters

Aniline

Atramentum

CHARCOAL

MANGANESE

Carbon black is traditionally derived from carbonising plant matter, like in the production of charcoal, but it is made today by burning coal or natural gas.

MARS BLACK IS A SYNTHETIC IRON OXIDE THAT WAS DEVELOPED IN THE 20TH CENTURY AS A HIGHLY OPAQUE ALTERNATIVE TO NATURAL EARTH PIGMENTS.

Black is a colour that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic colour, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. In Western society, black and white have often been used to describe opposites such as good and evil, the Dark Ages versus Age of Enlightenment, and night versus day. In Western society, since the Middle Ages, black has been the symbolic colour of solemnity and authority, and for this reason it is still commonly worn by judges and magistrates. Black was one of the first colours used by artists in Neolithic cave paintings. It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the colour of the underworld. In Ancient Egypt, black had positive associations; being the colour of fertility and the rich black soil flooded by the Nile. In the Roman Empire, it became the colour of mourning, and over the centuries it was frequently associated with death, evil, witches, and magic. In the 14th century, it was worn by royalty, clergy, judges, and government officials in much of Europe. It became the colour worn by English romantic poets, businessmen and statesmen in the 19th century, and a high fashion colour in the 20th century. According to surveys in Europe and North America, it is the colour most commonly associated with mourning, the end, secrets, magic, force, violence, fear, evil, and elegance.

Black is the most common ink colour used for printing books, newspapers and documents, as it provides the highest contrast with white paper and thus is the easiest colour to read. Similarly, black text on a white screen is the most common format used on computer screens. As of September 2019, the darkest material is made by MIT engineers from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. The word black comes from Old English blæc (black, dark, ink), from Proto-Germanic blakkaz (burned), from Proto-Indo-European bhleg (to burn, gleam, shine, flash), from base bhel (to shine), related to Old Saxon blak (ink), Old High German blach (black), Old Norse blakkr (dark), Dutch blaken (to burn), and Swedish bläck (ink). More distant cognates include Latin flagrare (to blaze, glow, burn), and Ancient Greek phlegein (to burn, scorch). The Ancient Greeks sometimes used the same word to name different colours, if they had the same intensity. Kuanos' could mean both dark blue and black. The Ancient Romans had two words for black: ater was a flat, dull black, while niger was a brilliant, saturated black. Ater has vanished from the vocabulary, but niger was the source of the country name Nigeria and the word for black in most modern Romance languages (French: noir; Spanish and Portuguese: negro; Italian: nero; Romanian: negru). Old High German also had two words for black: swartz for dull black and blach for a luminous black. These are parallelled in Middle English by the terms swart for dull black and blaek for luminous black. Swart still survives as the word swarthy, while blaek became the modern English black. The former is cognate with the words used for black in most modern Germanic languages aside from English (German: schwarz, Dutch: zwart, Swedish: svart, Danish: sort, Icelandic: svartr). Black was one of the first colours used in art. The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000 years ago.

Styles

Black Regular

OpenType features

Default characters

Smal Caps activated

Defalt characters

Stylistic Alternate 'o' activated

Default figures

Proportional Oldstyle figures activated

Glyphs

Basic character set

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnoopqrstuvwxyz

Small caps

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Accented characters and language options

ÀÁÂÃÄĀĂÅǺĄẠÆǼÇĆČĊĎÐÈÉÊẼËĒĔĚĖẸĘĞǦĠĢĦÌÍÎĨÏĪĬĮİỊĲ\uE133 ĶĹĽĻĿŁŃŇÑŅŊƝÒÓÔÕÖŌŎŐỌØǾŒŔŘŖŞŚŠȘŢŤȚŦÙÚÛŨÜŪŬŮŰỤŲẀẂŴẄỲÝŶỸŸȲŹŽŻẞÞƏàáâäāăãåǻąạæǽçćčċďđðèéêěẽëēĕėęẹǧğġģħìíîĩïīĭịįıĳ\uE132 ȷķĸĺļľŀłńňñŉņŋɲòóôõöōŏőọøǿœŕŗřşśšșţťŧțùúûũüūŭűůụųẁẃŵẅỳýŷỹÿȳźžżßþə

Language accents

` ´ ˆ ˇ ˘¯ ˙ ¨ ˝ ˚ ˜ ˛ ¸\uE001

Standard figures

0123456789

Tabular figures

0123456789

Oldstyle figures

0123456789

Symbols and punctation

@©®℗&%‰$¢£¥€₺₽¤™!¡?¿¶#†‡§•"'‘’“”‚„.,:;·…()[]{}|¦/\_-–—~^ªº°*×÷+-=≠<>«»‹›≤≥∞≈\uE000

Information

About Black

Black is a rigid typeface that is available in a single style. Originally developed for the Formist identity, Black has been expanded to cover an extended latin character set. Black is the result of an experiment into creating a typeface using severely limited proportions. Designed on a limited grid of square units, Black attempts to interpret each glyph using the fewest units possible, while maintaining personality and at a least a modicum of legibility.

Because of its systematic, grid based design, Black, on the surface, appears to be a pixel typeface. However it was not designed out of nostalgia and retains none of the touchstones of a pixel typeface; instead, Black focusses on squeezing the most out of its self-imposed limitations. With no fixed x-height and metrics that allow the corners of glyphs to touch one another, Black embraces an inflexible and extensive set of idiosyncrasies built from a pure, geometric proposition.

Release

2018

Design

Mark Gowing
Alexander Tanazefti

Mastering

Ben Kiel

Features

One style
Alternate o
Small caps
Oldstyle figures

Language support

Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Kurdish (Latin), Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Onĕipŏt, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami), Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni

Usage notes

We are committed to the highest levels of font production. Black has been professionally engineered to work seamlessly across all platforms and to perform exceptionally in print and on screen. The OpenType fonts contain a multitude of convenient features, such as expressive small caps, alternate figure sets and broad Latin-based language support to enhance your requirements.

Black's forms are intended to be as minimal as possible. However there are instances where characters need to be more complex to increase legibility for use at small sizes. The uppercase is more traditional in design, with a fixed cap height, whereas the small caps follows the same rules as the lowercase.

The kerning and metrics of Black are quite strict and can produce some interesting results. All the glyphs have uniform sidebearings and where required, have been kerned to either interlock or kiss the corners of neighbouring glyphs. These metrics create some interesting glyph pairings and combinations.

Leading can be set depending on the glyphs being used and how you want the glyphs to interact. A good starting point is to work in increments of 12.5%. For instance, at 75% leading, uppercase characters without accents will be separated by one grid unit and at 62.5% the characters will touch each other.

Fonts in use