Aphrodite Slim Pro is not just a lighter version of its sister Aphrodite Pro. Aphrodite Slim Pro has duplicated the quantity of characters of its partner, and that means more than 500 new glyphs, reaching a total of more than 1000. More delicate and meticulous, Aphrodite Slim Pro is once more a new typography with deep calligraphic ideals: We immersed ourselves into the world of each calligraphy ductus and each calligraphy masters by studying from decoration to lettering books. This was the key for the logic of Aphrodite Slim’s behavior. The new concept of Aphrodite Slim Pro was to join diverse styles of calligraphy in one in order to achieve an autonomous expressiveness, in fact, this is what calligraphy aims to, and we agreed to bring those ideals to the world of typography: It is justifiable to be inspired in hundred-year-old calligraphies, but it is even better if the results you obtain have a plus. A personal plus. During the creation process we were wondering whether it was possible to mix certain strokes of such rigid styles as uncial, (Li·n’s favourite style), with strokes of the copperplate, (Sav’s favourite style), and also to take and mix cualities of cancelleresca cursiva, formata and moderna; finally giving our creation a roman-transition italic look. So Aphrodite Slim takes ideals and aspects from those formal styles, following its own logic though, and emphasizing the fact of being a decorative typography. Calligraphy masters of our past are who we are in debt with. They are the cause we have lovely letters now. They have been spontaneous at the moment of creation, what differs from the type-designers of nowadays, whose spontaneity is more limited. Digital faces that we are used to see these days are a result of long hours of optical adjustments, grids, macros and inspirations of other existing typography, but without personal contributions. Aphrodite Slim wants to refute this. Its mission is to rescue de spontaneity of the artesanal lettering in order to obtain unique words; those which only calligraphy masters of our past or lettering artists of our present could give us. We have worked hard to achieve this, making Aphrodite the most universal font we could: It was necessary to study the most common words, focalizing more in the ones referring to “sensitivity”, of four of the most spoken languages in the world. Aphrodite Slim has an enormous quantity of decorative characters and special ligatures for phrases and words in English, French, Spanish and German. (See English, Français, Español, Deutsch PDF in the gallery section). We promise there is no existing type that decorates/ligates glyphs and words like Aphrodite Slim does: It is the first time a font like this really considers its purpose. -The way glyphs are ligated is insane- : Aphrodite Slim rescues some ideals of persons like Jan van den Velde (Italian cancilleresca writing of XVI Century) who understands ascenders and descenders as possibilities to beautify the lines of writing with curved strokes that seem to be dancing above and below of the words. This master also creates ascenders and descenders even where they are not necessary, on letters that do not actually need them: Aphrodite Slim takes this ideal. The font counts with a wide range of glyphs that seem not to be satisfied with its more primitive form and prefer to extreme their parts to be decorative. It also existed masters of calligraphy like José de Casanova of XVII Century, who, with a magnificant skill and a really personal mark, had the particularity of ligating words that were actually separated with spaces. This is another innovative feature in Aphrodite Slim. An investigation of the most common beginnings and endings words of the English language was done. Having that feature activated (discretionary ligatures), common words will start to ligate or to be decorated even when they are separated by spaces. Impossible to forget Francesco Periccioli of XVII Century and our experience us designers to face with works of him: His letters, that today are included in the group of cancellerescas modernas, have been a direct inspiration to the oldstyle figures and historical forms variables in Aphrodite Slim. Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (XVI Century) and his particular way of making tails and diagonals longer than usual, qualities that our creation reflects too. Finally, our adventures in Biblioteca Nacional and Barrio San Telmo, Buenos Aires, were essential for us to make Aphrodite Slim more complete and interesting: Sav did an excellent work when studying how the decorative miscellanea and swirls of early XX century were. She also investigated what particularities made those roman titling characters look antique so she could rescue some ideals for the oldstyle figures and historical forms variables. This also leaded her to create the ornaments variable in Aphrodite Slim. We are really proud of presenting Aphrodite Slim Pro, a typography that was the result of days and nights of working hard, because we do love what we do; and we are glad we are living in a present that gives us the possibility to spread this kind of art, because that is the way we consider our job: Aphrodite Slim Pro is Art. Hope you can appreciate the enormous work this type has. Features. Aphrodite Slim Pro is the most complete variable. It includes more than 1000 glyphs. Thanks to the Open-Type programming, it counts with a easy way to change/alternate glyphs if the application in which the font is used supports this. The variables contained in Aphrodite Slim Pro are also offered separately. Aphrodite Slim Text: It is the variable for lines and paragraphs. Thus it is the least ornamental and the most accurate to achieve a satisfying legibility. It has the Standard Ligatures feature in order to improve the possible conflicts some glyphs could have by others. Aphrodite Slim Contextual: It is the one that makes emphasis in decorating. It has the particularity of ligating/decorating words of common use in English, French, Spanish and German. It also has the quality of ligating common beginnings and endings of the common words in English. Aphrodite Slim Stylistic: With similar features of Slim Contextual. It includes a set of decorative numbers for a display use. Aphrodite Slim Swash: This one has special beginnings and endings to decorate words. Aphrodite Slim Endings: It makes words look as a signature. Aphrodite Slim Historical: It adds an antique look to the written word. It also has the special historical ligature function. Aphrodite Slim Titling: This one is the most decorative. Its copperplate inspired ornaments give words a special color, in order to handle the quantity of decoration, it comes with the standard ligature feature, which has the most common ligatures plus others that make decorative swirls not to be conflictive. Aphrodite Slim Ornaments: A set of 52 ornaments. Aphrodite Slim Pro includes all this features plus the Stylistic Set 1; Stylistic Set 2 and the possibility of Slashed Zero. We recommend you to check out the gallery in order to see all these features in action.

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

Type designers are crazy people. Not crazy in the sense that they think we are Napoleon, but in the sense that the sky can be falling, wars tearing the world apart, disasters splitting the very ground we walk on, plagues circling continents to pick victims randomly, yet we will still perform our ever optimistic task of making some little spot of the world more appealing to the human eye. We ought to be proud of ourselves, I believe. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Regardless of our own personal reasons for doing what we do, the very thing we do is in itself an act of optimism and belief in the inherent beauty that exists within humanity. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to choose the amazing obscure profession I now have, wouldn't have been able to be humbled by the history that falls into my hands and slides in front of my eyes every day, wouldn't have been able to live and work across previously impenetrable cultural lines as I do now, and wouldn't have been able to raise my glass of Malbeck wine to toast every type designer who was before me, is with me, and will be after me. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to mean these words as I wrote them: It’s a small world. Yes, it is a small world, and a wonderfully complex one too. With so much information drowning our senses by the minute, it has become difficult to find clear meaning in almost anything. Something throughout the day is bound to make us feel even smaller in this small world. Most of us find comfort in a routine. Some of us find extended families. But in the end we are all Eleanor Rigbys, lonely on the inside and waiting for a miracle to come. If a miracle can make the world small, another one can perhaps give us meaning. And sometimes a miracle happens for a split second, then gets buried until a crazy type designer finds it. I was on my honeymoon in New York City when I first stumbled upon the letters that eventually started this Affair. A simple, content tourist walking down the streets formerly unknown to me except through pop music and film references. Browsing the shops of the city that made Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a thousand other artists. Trying to chase away the tourist mentality, wondering what it would be like to actually live in the city of a billion tiny lights. Tourists don't go to libraries in foreign cities. So I walked into one. Two hours later I wasn't in New York anymore. I wasn't anywhere substantial. I was the crazy type designer at the apex of insanity. La La Land, alphabet heaven, curves and twirls and loops and swashes, ribbons and bows and naked letters. I'm probably not the very first person on this planet to be seduced into starting an Affair while on his honeymoon, but it is something to tease my better half about once in a while. To this day I can't decide if I actually found the worn book, or if the book itself called for me. Its spine was nothing special, sitting on a shelf, tightly flanked by similar spines on either side. Yet it was the only one I picked off that shelf. And I looked at only one page in it before walking to the photocopier and cheating it with an Argentine coin, since I didn't have the American quarter it wanted. That was the beginning. I am now writing this after the Affair is over. And it was an Affair to remember, to pull a phrase. Right now, long after I have drawn and digitized and tested this alphabet, and long after I saw what some of this generation’s type designers saw in it, I have the luxury to speculate on what Affair really is, what made me begin and finish it, what cultural expressions it has, and so on. But in all honesty it wasn't like that. Much like in my Ministry Script experience, I was a driven man, a lover walking the ledge, an infatuated student following the instructions of his teacher while seeing her as a perfect angel. I am not exaggerating when I say that the letters themselves told me how to extend them. I was exploited by an alphabet, and it felt great. Unlike my experience with Ministry Script, where the objective was to push the technology to its limits, this Affair felt like the most natural and casual sequence of processions in the world – my hand following the grid, the grid following what my hand had already done – a circle of creation contained in one square computer cell, then doing it all over again. By contrast, it was the lousiest feeling in the world when I finally reached the conclusion that the Affair was done. What would I do now? Would any commitment I make from now on constitute a betrayal of these past precious months? I'm largely over all that now, of course. I like to think I'm a better man now because of the experience. Affair is an enormous, intricately calligraphic OpenType font based on a 9x9 photocopy of a page from a 1950s lettering book. In any calligraphic font, the global parameters for developing the characters are usually quite volatile and hard to pin down, but in this case it was particularly difficult because the photocopy was too gray and the letters were of different sizes, very intertwined and scan-impossible. So finishing the first few characters in order to establish the global rhythm was quite a long process, after which the work became a unique soothing, numbing routine by which I will always remember this Affair. The result of all the work, at least to the eyes of this crazy designer, is 1950s American lettering with a very Argentine wrapper. My Affair is infused with the spirit of filete, dulce de leche, yerba mate, and Carlos Gardel. Upon finishing the font I was fortunate enough that a few of my colleagues, great type designers and probably much saner than I am, agreed to show me how they envision my Affair in action. The beauty they showed me makes me feel small and yearn for the world to be even smaller now – at least small enough so that my international colleagues and I can meet and exchange stories over a good parrilla. These people, whose kindness is very deserving of my gratitude, and whose beautiful art is very deserving of your appreciation, are in no particular order: Corey Holms, Mariano Lopez Hiriart, Xavier Dupré, Alejandro Ros, Rebecca Alaccari, Laura Meseguer, Neil Summerour, Eduardo Manso, and the Doma group. You can see how they envisioned using Affair in the section of this booklet entitled A Foreign Affair. The rest of this booklet contains all the obligatory technical details that should come with a font this massive. I hope this Affair can bring you as much peace and satisfaction as it brought me, and I hope it can help your imagination soar like mine did when I was doing my duty for beauty.