Have you ever wondered where the fonts you see come from? Every set of font you see came to be after years of careful design. If it’s better legibility for street signs or resemblance to calligraphy, the typographer usually makes a lot of decisions during the design process.

Fonts are like jackets that words wear when they come out to newspapers, websites, posters and so on. Bottom line: Every type design has a story. I’ve been learning a lot about different typographers and their stories at school so i think i’m just going to share with you some wonderful type I’ve been discovering. This one is called Parisine and it was exclusively made for for the streets of Paris.

The designer behind Parisine is Jean François Porchez who received the brief from RATP – the public transportation system of Paris – to create a font that would improve legibility on buses and trains. Parisine is a clean, non-serif font that is very economical, yet readable. Porchez is one of the most recognized contemporary French typographers in the world. He received numerous international awards for his fonts that include FF Angie, Le Monde Journal (for the French newspaper), Apolline among others. I think he captured pretty well the magic of Paris, don’t you think?

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