The ITC Highlander® typeface was borne out of designer Dave Farey’s desire to create a sans serif typeface family that would have a wide range of uses but would also stand out from the crowd. But as a typeface becomes more distinctive, it also tends to suffer on the usability scale; Farey was aware of this fine line. “I did not want to create a design that was so unusual that it limited itself to just a few display applications,” he recalls. “I was trying to draw a functional face - and one that was easy to read.”
Farey had long been a fan of Oswald Cooper, the early 20th century American typeface designer and lettering artist. Although Cooper never designed a sans serif type, he had created a number of display lettering exercises using serifless letterforms. Farey found one of these samples and tested the letters in a prototype font. He was delighted to find that they worked surprisingly well as text letterforms. With slight modifications, these letters became the foundation of ITC Highlander.
Although ITC Highlander is indeed a sans serif design, Farey prefers to categorize it as a “soft terminal monoline.” Many of the character shapes are based on serifed character designs and lack the crisp stroke ends common to sans serif faces. Farey believes that the soft terminals help make the design a little more readable than most sans serifs. The slightly uneven character stroke weights also aid readability. Farey choose to retain this hand-drawn aspect of Cooper’s original design. This delicate deviation from perfection saves the design from the slightly sterile quality of many sans serif faces. Highlander’s italics are true cursive designs that complement the roman while maintaining their own design integrity. ITC Highlander has a modest x-height, which lends an air of elegance to the otherwise casual appearance of the design.
Highlander was released in 1993 as a three-weight family with italic complements for each. In 1999, Farey drew a collection of swash and alternate characters for the book, book italic, bold and bold italic designs. At the same time, he created a roman and italic set of initial letters. Each weight of Highlander is rounded out with a suite of old style figures and small caps.