Maiola

Designed by Veronika Burian. Released 2010.

Maiola is a contemporary typeface that is mindful of its heritage. It is intended for high-quality printed text and thus handles its expressive tendencies with care to equalise the important issues of legibility and personality. Its glyphs have purposeful and subtle irregularities which enhance its dynamic spirit. Maiola shows that typefaces can bridge tradition and progression without losing one bit of expressiveness.

  • Judge’s Choice TDC 2004
  • 2005 Creative Review design competition
  • First place, 2008 Granshan competition (Cyrillic category)
  • Ukrainian typeface competition 
  • 2010 Rutenia Calligraphy & Typography Festival in Kyiv
  • E–A–T Exhibition

PRAHA - TEXAS

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Katolický kostelík Panny Marie v matičce Praze v Texasu, který navštěvovaly na přelomu 19. a 20. století stovky Čechů a Moravanů, měl na začátku 40. let velký smíšený pěvecký sbor.

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Texas Ghost Town — Fayette County, Central Texas S. The town is just south of the railroad tracks that parallel Highway 90. Praha is listed in Lindsay Baker's Ghost Towns of Texas. Praha is the Czech spelling of Prague. Prior to the coming of the Czechs, Praha was called Mulberry by the Anglo settlers. It's reputation for being a refuge for outlaws gave it the unoffical name of Hotentot. Praha has a huge gathering every August when thousands descend on the church grounds for a homecoming. Located on the southwest edge of Fayette County; first people here were outlaws and misfits. The first Bohemian to arrive was Matej Novak in 1855; other Bohemian and Moravian families arrived, especially after the Civil War.

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The town was first called Mulberry, but the name was later changed to Praha, which is the Czech name for Prague, the governing city of Bohemia. School was first taught in Novak's home and then others. A public school was built in 1868, but it burned and was replaced. A Catholic school built in 1896 was run by the Sisters of the Divine Providence of San Antonio. It was said to be the first Bohemian Catholic School in America. By 1882, there were 200 families. Businesses included two saloons, a post office, café, herb center, liquor store , blacksmith shop, wheelwright shop, meat market, dance hall, a resident physician, and a cotton gin three miles south of Praha. Later Hajek's Garage opened.

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The Backstory

Maiola

A contemporary, expressive serif with calligraphic nuances.

Inspired by early Czech type design, Veronika Burian’s Maiola is a contemporary typeface that is mindful of its heritage. Maiola creates a welcoming tension on the page by implementing oldstyle features and calligraphic reminiscences such as a humanist axis, modest contrast, and pen-formed terminals.

Maiola is intended for high-quality printed text and thus handles its expressive tendencies with care to equalise the important issues of legibility and personality.

Maiola’s expressiveness stems from the handmade feeling of the letterforms. To give the impression that it was etched rather than created digitally, its glyphs have purposeful and subtle irregularities which enhance its dynamic spirit. Hard breaks and sharp angles placed throughout each glyph reinforce the idea of handmade imperfections inherent to the technology of centuries past: strokes and serifs vary slightly in weight and shape; the rising crossbar of the ‘e’ opens the interior space; the foot serifs are asymmetrical in length and diagonally cut; each curve has angles injected; and the serifs along the x-height have diagonal and curved shapes.

Maiola’s italic styles take the expressiveness a few steps further, proudly displaying the sharp and cutting nature of the pen tool. It follows a similar spirit as the roman, but with greater stroke contrast and more brisk curvature and angularity throughout. Alternate capital letters are available in the italic to vary the feeling slightly while keeping Maiola’s inherent dynamism and liveliness.

Together these characteristics have a tangible benefit on the comfort and ease of reading and, though they remain subtle at text sizes, are commanding, pointed, and memorable when used in large headings. Maiola shows that each variation is perfectly in place — resolved in the best way possible to bridge tradition and progression without losing one bit of expressiveness.

Maiola covers the Latin A character set with a broad set of opentype features, which is also included in Maiola Cyrillic, and Maiola Greek that covers polytonic Greek languages (Greek extension by Irene Vlachou). While each is basically independent from each other, harmonise well together in multilingual text settings. Maiola is more than able to bring high-quality expression to your projects with its six styles and exhaustive OpenType features. The complete Maiola family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.