Author
Juan Luis Blanco

Creation
2017, 2020

Actual version
1

Styles
17

Character sets
Basic Latin
Latin-1 Supplement
Latin-2 Central European
Latin Plus
Stylistic Sets

License Types
Webfont, Desktop, ePub, App, Server

Description

Harri –“stone” in Basque language– is a display font based on the peculiar letter forms used in signs and fascias all over the Basque Country. This idiosyncratic lettering style, very often used as an identity signifier, evolved from ancient inscriptions carved on gravestones which can still be found in the French part of the Basque Country (Behe Nafarroa, Lapurdi and Zuberoa). Harri takes some of its more significant features from those engraved letterforms, but also from the current overemphasized shapes derived from them, while keeping in sight their antecesors, the Romanesque inscriptions and ultimately the Roman Capitals. Gerard Unger once said “the black version of a font is a caricature of the regular”. This may explain how the odd heavy shapes in use today might have evolved from their engraved roots, which are already an interpretation of Romanesque and Roman letterforms. 

This evolution is echoed in Harri through its weights, from the clean formal Roman-inspired light to the extreme expressive Basque-style extra bold.

Harri Text is more than an extension of Harri. It shares its origin, a certain flavour and a great deal of its idiosyncrasies, but while Harri is an uppercase-only typeface intended for display uses, Harri Text is conceived as a text type family, including a new extra-light weight, italics, small caps and other additions that make it suitable for editorial purposes. As its predecessor Harri Text addresses several concerns regarding the dualism neutrality vs. idiosyncrasy, or in other words, how local features meet global design in the context of a modern society (as is the case in the Basque Country in recent times).

Hosted webfonts
TypeNetwork

Tags
Display, Editorial Design, On Screen, Sans Serif, App