Vesica
A geometric monoline typeface built from the Quantum Observer mark: two circles, one radius apart, and the lens where they overlap.
Two circles, one radius apart
Most of the letters come from a few shapes made by overlapping two circles. The purple lines below are the construction circles.
The mark
Everything starts from the Quantum Observer mark: two equal circles, each centre sitting on the other circle, tilted 45°. The Q’s tail runs from its own centre to the far edge of the second circle, so it is exactly two radii long.
The Q in the font keeps that tail, and its kerning ignores it, so the tail runs under the next letter the way it does in the mark.
The stacked arch
Stack two circles one radius apart and the overlap is a lens. The a uses that lens as its bowl, with the top circle’s arc as its arch. The n, h, u and r take the same arch over a straight stem.
The eye bowl
Put the two circles side by side and the overlap stands upright, like an eye. A stroke runs flat, bends 30° into the eye’s point, follows its edge and bends flat again. That one move makes the S, the bowls of b, d, p, q, g, B, D, P and R, and the C, G, t and f.
The S is where I bent the rule: its crossbar is a quarter of a radius longer than the eye is wide, because the pure version looked too narrow next to the O.
Half an eye
Cut the eye across its middle and turn it point down. Its two edges become the arms of the V. Two half-eyes overlapping by half a radius, with one line up the middle, make the w. The M hangs a half-eye between two stems, and the K lays one on its side.
Half an eye is always wider than it is tall, so the V and W run wide.
Swapped arcs
The N’s diagonal is two 60° arcs that bow opposite ways and meet at the centre. The Z mirrors it, the X crosses two of them, and the 4 and 7 borrow it.
Flat ends, sharp corners
Every letter is a single centre line drawn with one stroke width. Ends are cut square and corners are mitred, so the A’s feet and the B’s corners stay crisp. With round ends the whole thing looked too soft.
Light, Regular and Bold are the same lines drawn at stroke widths of 7, 12 and 18.
Measured, then kerned
Each side of each letter gets the same amount of white space as a straight stem, measured from its outline, so round and slanted letters sit closer in. On top of that, 1,525 letter pairs are kerned. Every pair was slid together to see how much room it has to tuck in, such as an o under a T, and moved half of that.
To Ty Yo LT AV Wa r. Quantum
88 characters
Basic Latin letters, figures and common punctuation. There is no ampersand and there are no accented letters yet, so text that needs them falls back to another font for those characters.
Embed
Add the stylesheet to your page’s head, then use Vesica in your CSS. The font files are served with open CORS headers, so this works from any domain.
HTML
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.quantum.observer/vesica/vesica.css">CSS
h1, h2, h3 {
font-family: Vesica, system-ui, sans-serif;
font-weight: 400; /* 300 Light, 400 Regular, 700 Bold */
}Or import it from your stylesheet
@import url("https://fonts.quantum.observer/vesica/vesica.css");Hosting the files yourself
@font-face {
font-family: Vesica;
src: url("/fonts/Vesica-Light.woff2") format("woff2");
font-weight: 300;
font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
font-family: Vesica;
src: url("/fonts/Vesica-Regular.woff2") format("woff2");
font-weight: 400;
font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
font-family: Vesica;
src: url("/fonts/Vesica-Bold.woff2") format("woff2");
font-weight: 700;
font-display: swap;
}
Files
OTF to install on your computer, WOFF2 for the web.
Vesica is free to use, embed and modify under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. You can use it in anything, including commercial work. The one thing you can’t do is sell the font files on their own.