ITC Black Tulip was designed by Dudley Rees and inspired by the modular simplicity of the Greek fret band, an ancient repeating pattern formed by tracing a line at right angles between two horizontal rules to form an interlocking motif. Rees admired the discipline of the motif, I saw how that simple rigid rectangular network suggested an alphabet that would need little or no kerning," he says. He describes ITC Black Tulip as a "dramatic headline face"."