Roman Grotesque
Bureau Brut · Yoann Minet · 2021
A hybrid typeface by Yoann Minet that grafts humanistic serif details onto a grotesque skeleton, originally designed for the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville.
About
Designed in 2019 and released by Bureau Brut in 2021, the family runs across eight weights from Extralight to Black with matching italics, totalling 16 styles. The serifs become progressively less prominent as weight increases, so the lighter cuts read as text faces while the heavier ones perform well at display sizes. It was commissioned for an architecture school whose identity concept placed the human at the centre of construction, and that tension between the organic and the geometric is literal in the letter shapes.
Classification
Structured around a sans-serif skeleton with humanistic serif details grafted onto its letterforms, creating a hybrid that defies clean classification; closest to humanist sans with glyphic inflections rather than a true serif.