One thing that Sahlia has always done is take contrast to the extreme. The “stencil” part of the design is actually just a consequence of extremely high contrast. Most stencil typefaces originate from the need to replicate the letters by tracing or painting using a stencil. In non-stencil letterforms there is nothing to hold the counter shapes in place so slices need to be made through the letter to hold the counter space in place. I very consciously wanted to avoid this “sliced” feeling in Sahlia. The stencil in Sahlia comes from the thin parts being weathered away, kind of like the visual outcome of using a high contrast typeface in smaller text sizes as the thin parts seem to disappear completely. The results have a lot more flow and organic shapes than a typical stencil typeface which is what sets Sahlia apart in the category.
What’s New?
Sahlia finally has a new level of versatility with four more weights and companion italic styles. Everything has been completely redrawn so you may notice a large difference between the old Regular weight and the new one. The redraw was necessary because of the way a variable font project needs to be structured but I also took the opportunity to tighten up the consistency in the letterform design and apply the expertise gained over three more years of experience drawing letters. The Sahlia drawings have improved proportion, a better balance, and more consistency of design features and shapes across the character set.
The weights now range from a delicate Light, through to a juicy Extra Bold but my favourite addition are the italics. They were designed with steep angles and alternate characters that bring in the feeling of true italics. I love how the steep angles play nice with the sharp serif edges and terminal endings which signals even more luxury than the upright styles. If I had to choose a favourite letter, it would definitely be the x!
Language support also got a boost up to my current base of 327 Latin-based languages and the diacritic revisions are so much more consistent than before. Specifically, the diacritics have been made larger for more presence and have shape revisions that give them more flow like the slightly curved acute—an idea that I will credit to my good friend Sophia Tai who mentioned it at a chat we had mid last year. The horn has changed shape from a ball terminal to a wedged schwoop to match some of the same changes made to the base forms.
If you’ve been following me, you know that I’m a sucker for a variable font and now that Sahlia has more styles it gets to have a variable font too! Fine tune those weights or animate between them to your heart’s content. The italic axis is technically supposed to just be either on or off, but most software will allow you to explore all the in-betweens. You’ll notice that many alternates swap out at the halfway point though so it’s not really meant for animations (but great for having access to all the styles in the one file!)
[Variable font demo]
Adventures in Alternates
V1 had a ball terminals set which I have renamed “teardrop terminals” because the shape ended up more teardrop than ball. The shapes have been rebalanced and designed to work across the weight range better. At one point in the original design, they were circles that were meant as an option for logo design, but I felt like they fought against the concept of the weathered away stencil. When I tried them as teardrops it gave the whole typeface a different feel, something a bit softer and maybe more traditionally similar to a rational high contrast typeface like Bodoni.
The second stylistic set is the original single crossbar A and H from the v1. I chose to not make these the default because of future plans to add a non-stencil version but felt they were still worth including for now.
The third stylistic set is purely functional. Nuu-cha-nulth speakers prefer a wavy crossbar on the lambda bar character so this is an accessible way to switch the design.
I also chose to leave some things out of v2. The first version had some discretionary ligatures, and entry and exit strokes which would have dramatically increased the workload for v2 considering all the alternates and styles. I was honestly never completely happy with how those turned out—they always felt a bit forced or cheesy—but I would be open to adding them back in at some point if there is interest.
Ready to get a bit technical? To get the beautiful g in this typeface, I needed to draw eight different versions of the g and program it to show you the right one in the right circumstance. We begin with a basic g, but then we need a toothpaste version for the bolder weights (g.bold). Then if we switch to the teardrop stylistic set we need two versions that have ball terminals. And finally, if we italicize it we need four more versions where the hairstyle (ear) flips around. Phew 😮💨 but we’re not done yet…
In the static fonts, we don’t need to include all eight drawings in the export, for example, in the bold weights, I can replace the four basic g drawings with the g.bold versions and delete the original g’s on export. This cuts down on unnecessary characters in the final font file.
In the variable font I have to include all eight drawings so it can switch to the appropriate drawing at the bold or italic section of the axes. We can use some required ligatures (RLIG) open type feature code makes this work (shown in image above). How’s your brain doing? Mine was a bit melted at this point 😅
What’s It Good For?
Sahlia feels at home in packaging, particularly if the product needs to feel luxurious or elegant like chocolate or candles. I love chocolate (like dark 90% chocolate) so making some chocolate packaging specimens seemed like an obvious choice. I was having trouble naming the fake chocolate company and when I consulted with my 10-year-old we discussed the butterfly and museum aspects that were in the other specimen images and we came up with Specimen Chocolate, which I think is a perfect fit.
Sahlia could also feel at home in a wedding invite or in an editorial piece in a magazine. I’d love your help to find where else it belongs, I’m sure you all have wonderful creative ideas for where this typeface could live. If you use it somewhere, make sure to email me so we can do a little virtual high five about putting great design into the world.
What Comes Next?
While working on this expansion, I got carried away with ideas about what Sahlia would look like without the stencil aspect. I did test two more axes—stencil and contrast—which could be fun future additions to the family particularly on variable axes!
Overall, I’m so pleased that Sahlia is now a full family of fonts! I always want the fonts I create to be truly useful and with the additional weights and italics the style count is brought up to ten which allows for so much more varied expression with Sahlia. I’m also excited that Sahlia feels more organic and flowing than ever before and that I had an opportunity to really dig into the drawings and make real improvements that elevate the whole design. I hope you are excited as I am and please do take the new Sahlia files for a spin with my free trial fonts!
You can also go look at the purchase options on the Sahlia Page!