Havel is an updated interpretation of a Czech type design from the 1930s. It is powerful and very condensed. At a quick glance you might find kinship with other condensed typefaces of the same period, like Spire (Sol Hess, 1937), Onyx (Gerry Powell for ATF, 1937) or Quirinus Bold (Alessandro Butti, 1939). But Havel has its very own look, rooted in the rapidly disappearing "Eastern European Type", a typographical tradition where poster and packaging design were the highlights. Torbjörn Olsson has revived this classical Czech beauty, and the Open Type version, Havel Pro, can also be used for Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian.

Front Desk is designed to be easily readable, its increased legibility coming from the slightly enlarged lower case letters (a greater x-height) which make it easy on the eye. Also it is slightly slanted (but a lot less than a normal italic angle) to give it a more informal and modern look than a perfectly upright font would be, which is also intended to contribute extra dynamism while reading. Five available weights give adequate variation, and there are some Condensed and Expanded varieties in the complete set. A primary feature of this font is that the serif bases and tops are not indented or concave, which gives clear straight edges to the serifs, and the removal of this complexity adds to the clean lines and crispness of the font. The package contains both OTF and TTF versions - install either OTF or TTF, not both versions of a font on the same machine.