The ITC Obliqua™ typeface is a humanistic sans serif design that follows in the tradition of designs like the Frutiger® and Slate™ typefaces. César Puertas, Obliqua’s designer, sought to draw a face “that combined the proportions of humanist, foundational handwriting with the ‘industrial’ features of a traditional gothic design.” In doing so, he created a typeface that has personality without being quirky. “My goal,” he continued, “was to create a legible and personable typeface that could be used for setting both running text and display headlines.” Obliqua is a two-weight family, of Regular and Bold, each with a cursive italic designed to save space in addition to complementing the roman weights.
A native of Colombia, Puertas says, “I’ve liked drawing letters since I was in design school – which was a good thing, because I didn’t own a computer or have access to digital fonts. Later on, when I knew that my love for type was real, I went to a graphic design conference where I could attend a lecture given by Argentinean type designer Rubén Fontana. That sealed my typographic fate.”
Obliqua is distinguished by a descending lowercase “f,” a bowl-and-loop “g,” and curved terminals on the “i” and “l.” These characters, and the two-storied “a,” also ensure high levels of legibility. In addition, Puertas took special care in designing the numerals to guarantee legibility. The full and open counters and soft curves give Obliqua a friendly, inviting quality that is sure to bring a level of appeal to copy set in the face.
The ITC Obliqua family is also available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts. Graphic communicators can work with this versatile design while taking advantage of OpenType’s capabilities, including the automatic insertion of old style figures, ligatures and small caps. The new ITC Obliqua Pro fonts also offer an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages.