inspired in medieval iluminated gotic manuscripts

After researching the type styles contemporary graphic designers have been using over the past few years, I noticed a consistent use of Copperplate Gothic, and its derivative designs, for various corporate advertising campaigns. That level of usage gave me the inspiration to design a display font possessing subtle characteristics of Copperplate Gothic, and various Latin Condensed designs. The font I ended up designing was semi-condensed, with more contrast between thicks and thins than in Copperplate. Baltra also has a subtle flair in its otherwise traditional lowercase, while possessing a larger than average lowercase x-height. Copperplate Gothic, on the other hand, has minimal contrast and uses small capitals for its lowercase. After examining extensive type specimens from wood type, metal type, phototype and digital type, I was not able to find a single design possessing a majority of Baltra's characteristics. Consequently, I consider Baltra to be a truly unique design, sharing with Copperplate Gothic only its flairs on stems, and having only subtle characteristics in common with traditional Latin designs.

A heavy unnamed Gothic typeface from the 1890 William H. Page Foundry woodtype specimen book provided the template for this bold, brash, no-nonsense face. It's designed to set tight, so your headlines will definitely get noticed. Named for a town in West Central Texas which is noted for being the home of the Buffalo Soliders in the late 1800s. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

In creating Vectora, Adrian Frutiger was influenced by American Gothic styles, especially those of Morris F. Benton’s Franklin Gothic and News Gothic. Vectora is light and balanced, giving text legibility and a harmonious appearance.