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ABOUT

Catharsis [Christian "Cinga" Thalmann]

Catharsis is located in Leiden, The Netherlands. Before that, Christian Thalmann's page Cinga.ch was run out of Switzerland, when he was a student at ETH Zürich. Thalmann is an astrophysicist by training.

Catharsis had free typefaces such as the great Arabic simulation typeface Catharsis Bedouin (2004), CatharsisCircular, CatharsisRequiem (a unicase pair), CatharsisRequiemBold, CatharsisCargo, Cirnaja Bookhand and Cirnaja Calligraphy (made for his artificial language, Obrenje), Catharsis Macchiato (2005), CatharsisEspresso (2005).

At Catharsis, the commercial foundry, he published Octant in 2013: Octant is an original steampunk display typeface drawing inspiration from Victorian-age steel and brass engineering, as well as from blackletter typography. Gryffensee (2013, in styles called Eins, Zwei and Drei) is designed to be the Futura of blackletter, combining the time-honored gravity and relentlessness of the Gothic script with the clean, contemporary freshness of the geometric sans. It also covers Cyrillic.

Backstein (2013), baked brick, took its inspiration from the broken antiqua lettering in Berlin's old subway stations.

Volantene Script (2013) is a (free) uncial display typeface inspired by the penmanship of Lady Talisa Maegyr-Stark as seen on HBO's Game of Thrones. Numina (2013, Glamour and Glory substyles) is an extensive condensed fashion-oriented typeface family related to Skyline and Corvinus.

Maestrale (2013) adds calligraphic and flamboyant extenders to a decorative text typeface for a dramatic effect. Choose between Maestrale Manual (swashy) and Manuale Text.

Blumenkind (2013) is inspired by an instance of metal-strip lettering found on the Bürgermeister Kornmesser Siedlung residential building complex in Berlin from the 1960s.

Brilliance (2013) is a glamorous contemporary display blackletter combining the rich tapestry of Textura with a hint of the airy lightness of Spencerian script. Let's say that it is a light-hearted Textura.

In 2015, he made the free 45-style classic serif typeface family Cormorant, which includes several unicase fonts. This typeface started out in 2014 as Paramond, a light, contrasted, space-taking Garalde with impossibly tiny counters and long extenders. Links to the Google Font directory: Cormorant, Cormorant Garamond, Cormorant Infant, Cormorant SC, Cormorant Unicase, Cormorant+UprightCormorant Upright. See also CTAN.

In 2016, he created the humanist geometric sans typeface family Quinoa for Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew.

Typefaces from 2017: Tesserae (kitchen tile style), Traction. Traction was originally conceived and designed by Christian Thalmann. Chiara Mattersdorfer and Miriam Suranyi expanded, completed and produced the font family. This typeface sports signature serifs, soft edges and a fluid, organic design.

In 2018, Christian started work on a blackletter-themed stencil typeface, first called Komik Ohne (the German for Comic Sans) and later named Kuschelfraktur (2019).

Between 2016 and 2019, he developed Eau de Garamond---a sans distilled from the essence of Garamond---, which was later renamed Ysabeau. Github link. In 2020, we find another fork, Isabella Sans.

Overbold (2019) is described by him as follows: Overbold is an unapologetic display typeface inspired by an illustration in Eric Gill's Essay on Typography (p.51), in which he demonstrates how not to make letters. In particular, he shows that increasing the weight of the downstroke in a serif A without structural adjustments yields an absurd, overbold result. I found the letter so charming that I decided to blatantly disregard Gill's wisdom and draw an entire overbold typeface. Here is the result. I'm not sorry.

1001 fonts link. Yet another URL. Fontspace link. Behance link. Klingspor link. Dafont link. Open Font Library link. Github link.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Catharsis
 [Buy fonts]
 [Designer info]
Fontspring link [Buy fonts]
Dafont page
Fontspace page
Behance page
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type design in Switzerland ⦿ Sites with only a few free fonts ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Unicase type design ⦿ Arabic simulation typefaces ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Dutch type design ⦿ Blackletter fonts ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Uncial typefaces ⦿ Fashion mag typefaces ⦿ Skyline Typefaces ⦿ Textura ⦿ Steampunk typefaces ⦿ Garalde or Garamond typefaces ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Hebrew font links ⦿ Kitchen tile fonts ⦿ Sites with only a few free fonts ⦿