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ABOUT

Molotro [Luciano Perondi]

Molotro is Luciano Perondi's type foundry, which he runs with Stefano Minelli and Valentina Montagna. This Italian type designer (b. Busto Arsizio, 1976) lives in Busto Arsizio (Varese). At ATypI in Rome in 2002, he spoke about the logo-grammatic approach to type design: "Carattere senza un nome importante". His ATypI 2002 report is here. In this enlightening piece, you can read about his opinions on type. In 2000 and the following few years, he lectured at the Basic Design Lab of the Politecnico di Milano. In 2003 he founded the Research Team EXP. The research team, formed by type designers and psychologists, studies the reading process, the influences of the irregularity of typefaces on reading and the non linear script. EXP is now starting to work on the effects of presbiopia on reading and on how an adequate design of types could help presbiopian readers.

He was appointed associate professor of Design at the IUAV Venice in 2018 and he is also a member of the Alpaca cooperative of designers. From 2003 until 2007 he ran the Molotro studio. From 2005 until 2013 he was on the editorial board of the Italian design magazine Progetto Grafico. He has lectured in many Italian universities. From 2013 until 2016, he was the Director of the ISIA Urbino. In 2012 Stampa Alternativa published his book on non-linear writing, Sinsemie: scritture nello spazio.

In 2013, he became a member of the cooperative foundry CAST, and is now its chief designer.

At ATypI 2005 in Helsinki, he spoke about How does the irregularity of letters affect reading? His type designs include

• Solferino Text (2007), a great transitional understated text typeface for the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Done with Leftloft (Andrea Braccaloni).
• Minotype (2006, aka Ninzioletto, a stencil face).
• Zotico/Zotica (2004, a sans family for the Milano Film Festival).
• Ninzioletto (2004, a stencil typeface designed for the Venice sign system).
• Tecnotipo (2005, designed for Tecno).
• Quinta (2006).
• DeA (2003, for DeAgostini).
• Ccunami.
• Csuni (which stands for Carattere Senza Un Nome Importante).
• Csuni1885 (2003, for Mattioli1885; see also Experience1885).
• Mattioli1885.
• DeA, for DeAgostini (2003).
• Sessantacinque (2003).
• Eye of Goat: designed in 2005 by Perondi, Valentina Montagna and Federico Zerbinati. It is a medieval ornaments typeface (free for a limited time).
• Nanoline (hairline sans).
• Decima (2005), a sans.
• Lontano (2003). A Caslon-style typeface commissioned for the Matteoli 1885 edition.
• Brera (2007, a sans family by Leftloft and Molotro).
• Voland (2010). A commissioned Baskerville typeface for the Italian publishing house Voland.
• Under the identity design and art direction of FF3300, Molotro created the sans typeface family Divenire, in Regular, Italic and Mono subfamilies, for the Italian Democratic Party in 2012-2013. Since 2014, Divenire can be bought as a reatil font at CAST.
• Dic Sans (2014). This elliptical sans was inspired by Aldo Novarese's Eurostile. It has its own idiosyncracies, and comes with a gorgeous Dic Sans Extra Bold weight (2014). On the nomenclature---French are allowed to operate Sans Dic, and Americans are permitted to typeset with Extra Bold Dic.
• Tribasei 16-000 (2006). An experimental typeface.
• Macho Modular (2015, CAST). Macho was originally designed in 2010 for MAN (Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro) and is based on the idea of modular widths of the 20th-century typesetting systems, as required by the Olivetti Margherita and the hot-metal Linotype machine. It was followed by Macho Moustache (2018, CAST).

EXTERNAL LINKS
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Type design in Italy ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Readability & Legibility ⦿ Sites with only a few free fonts ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿ Very thin (hairline sans) typefaces ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Caslon ⦿ Monospaced fonts ⦿ Baskerville ⦿ Books on type design ⦿