Jarlath
Signal · Max Phillips
A digital revival of Jarlath Hayes's 1974 Tuam Uncial, reworking a dry-transfer typeface rooted in hacked Helvetica Bold into a 150-language family with serif and sans variants.
About
Max Phillips designed this revival under the supervision of Hayes's daughter, taking the original Tuam Uncial's extreme squarish forms, derived from sliced Helvetica Bold to evoke Insular manuscript scripts, and moderating them for better readability through reduced contrast and more generous letterspacing. The family extends to four styles: regular and italic with the original's semiserifs, and a sans pair drawing on early drafts that predated those details. Ligatures, directional arrows and expanded punctuation accompany support for over 150 languages.
Classification
A digital revival of an uncial-style typeface rooted in Insular manuscript traditions, combining semi-serif and sans variants derived from a hacked Helvetica Bold source. The uncial letterforms place it firmly in the display category with a specialised historical subcategory.