Dia
Schick Toikka · Florian Schick, Lauri Toikka
A four-weight early-grotesk revival that mixes distinct historical models in one family, with hairline accents, circled numbers and arrows.
About
Dia distils the diverse spirit of the first jobbing grotesks of the mid-1800s into a concise eight-style family that works for both text and display. The four weights with matching italics deliberately avoid a uniform pattern: each celebrates a different historical model, from light and narrow with curling terminals to heavy and broad with ends that point outward. Compatible vertical proportions let them sit harmoniously in the same line, and an alternate set of hairline accents and punctuation can dial up the expressive register. The OpenType feature set includes figures and fractions, an Extended Latin character set and a batch of circled numbers and arrows.
Classification
Schick Toikka frame Dia as a family that captures the spirit of mid-1800s jobbing grotesks, when printers mixed and matched sans serifs of varying shapes and sizes; the four weights deliberately do not adhere to a uniform pattern, each celebrating a different historical model.