QuaText

Although the members of the Thesis family have been successfully used as text faces, nothing beats a medium-contrast oldstyle for comfortable immersive reading. Hence TheAntiqua, an all-purpose text face whose name refers to the traditional Dutch/German word for “oldstyle”.

TheAntiqua’s proportions are similar to those of the Thesis family members, but with increased contrast between thin and thin strokes, and wedge-shaped serifs. Its diagonal stress subtly refers to the stroke of the broad-nibbed pen.

Three distinctly different versions of TheAntiqua were drawn with different clients in mind. TheAntiqua Sun was originally made as a corporate typeface for Sun Microsystems; it has a sharper and simpler structure than other variants of TheAntiqua and is limited to two weights, Regular and Bold. TheAntiquaB was developed as a neutral text face to work well with Thesis. It comes in a generous range of seven weights, from Light to Black. The new OpenType fonts have built-in small caps and several styles of numerals.

In 2000, a special version of TheAntiqua called QuaText was developed in close collaboration with the Berlin newspaper Die Tages­zeitung (taz). Its sturdy forms were optimized for newspaper stock. QuaText is a balanced newsface family with variable weights to compensate for press and paper quality. Customized versions of QuaText can be produced according to clients’ specifications.