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Antique Olive [Roger Excoffon]

Antique Olive is a brash humanist sans-serif typeface designed in 1959 by French type designer Roger Excoffon for an Air France logo. It was released at Fonderie Olive (Marseille, France) as a retail typeface in 1962 with further development occurring until 1968. In addition to a basic weight, Antique Olive was produced in medium, condensed, wide, bold, condensed bold, extra bold (known as Antique Olive Compact), and ultra bold (known as Nord). Its almost reverse stress disqualifies Antique Olive from use as a body typeface. It was effectively used, e.g., in the Sesame Street credits from 1969 until 1983.

Digital revivals:

• Antique Olive (Adobe).
• Antique Olive (Linotype).
• Antique Olive (URW).
• Bitstream: Incised 901.
• Antique Oakland (Brother Industries Ltd), late 1990s.
• Antigone (Infinitype).
• Antigone (Softmaker).
• Ravenna Serial (Softmaker).
• Oliva (Autologic).
• AO (Itek).
• Olive (Varityper).
• OPTI Ancienta (Castcraft).
• Antique Olive Heavy (1992, Gary Elfring).
• Other names used by smaller outfits: Alphavanti, Berry Roman, Gibson Antique, Olivanti, Olive Antique, Oliver, Olivette, Olivette Antique, Olivia, Provence.

Digital typefaces influenced by Antique Olive:

• Anton Moglia's Paysage (2020).
• Kia Tasbihgou's Propos (2018).
• Lena Douani's Teelay Sans (2017).
• Aero (2011, Chester Jenkins and Jeremy Mickel).
• Aurelien Vret's Prosaic Black (2017) is a distant cousin on Antique Olive Nord.
• Kelly Media's Antiqua 1010 (1994).
• Zizou or Clouseau (2011), by Christian schwartz. A reworking (from memory) of Antique Olive. This was published at the end of 2013 as Duplicate (2013, with Miguel Reyes). In three styles, Slab, Sans and Ionic. Commercial Type writes: Christian Schwartz wanted to see what the result would be if he tried to draw Antique Olive from memory. He was curious whether this could be a route to something that felt contemporary and original, or if the result would be a pale imitation of the original. Most of all, he wanted to see what he would remember correctly and what he would get wrong, and what relationship this would create between the inspiration and the result. Though it shares some structural similarities with Antique Olive and a handful of details, like the shape of the lowercase a, Duplicate Sans is not a revival, but rather a thoroughly contemporary homage to Excoffon. Duplicate Sans was finally finished at the request of Florian Bachleda for his 2011 redesign of Fast Company. Bachleda wanted a slab companion for the sans, so Schwartz decided to take the most direct route: he simply added slabs to the sans in a straightforward manner, doing as little as he could to alter the proportions, contrast, and stylistic details in the process. The bracketed serifs and ball terminals that define the Clarendon genre (also known as Ionic) first emerged in Britain in the middle of the 19th century. While combining these structures with a contemporary interpretation of a mid-20th century French sans serif seems counterintutive, the final result feels suprisingly natural. The romans are a collaboration between Christian Schwartz and Miguel Reyes, but the italic is fully Reyes's creation, departing from the sloped romans seen in Duplicate Sans and Slab with a true cursive. Mark Porter and Simon Esterson were the first to use the family, in their 2013 redesign of the Neue Züricher Zeitung am Sonntag. Because the Ionic genre has ll ong been a common choice for text in newspapers, Duplicate Ionic is a natural choice for long texts. Duplicate Ionic won an award at TDC 2014.
• Utile (2020, Kontour Type). Utile was influenced by Hermann Zapf's Optima in its flaring and by Roger Excoffon's Antique Olive in its brashness.
• Oliver New (1995, Anastasia Babalyan at TypeMarket).
• Filt (Martin Fredrikson Core).
• Chalfont (2003, Alan Meeks).

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INTERNAL LINKS
Type design in France ⦿ Typography ⦿