Rudolf Antiqua
CAST · Claudio Rocha, Lucas Franco · 2018
A careful digital revival of Rudolf Koch's Koch-Antiqua (1922), reconstructed from original Klingspor drawings and specimens by Claudio Rocha and Lucas Franco with an expanded character set and capital ligatures.
About
Rocha and Franco spent two years researching Koch's original proofs and specimens at the Klingspor Museum library before building the revival in digital format. The design preserves Koch-Antiqua's defining features: strongly flared stems, a notably small x-height that sets tall ascenders and capitals into sharp relief, and a humanist lowercase with Renaissance roots. The digital version adds accented characters, discretionary ligatures and contextual alternates, making it suited to display setting, book jackets and editorial work.
Classification
Rudolf Antiqua is a digital revival of Koch-Antiqua (1922), which exhibits humanist serif characteristics: strongly flared stems, a small x-height with tall ascenders, an oblique stress axis, and lowercase forms traceable to Venetian Renaissance models.