Léon Hugues

Since the 2000s and the omnipresence of the Internet in our daily lives, the profession of type designer has come to the fore. How did you become interested in letters in general and typography in particular? What was your professional training?

I became interested in letters in general and typography through my studies. I passed my high school diploma and went on to study at the École Estienne, because I wanted to practice graphic design, designing logos and posters. And as training in type design was possible, I went there for a Bachelor degree, where I met Franck Jalleau (Imprimerie Nationale). And after following his teaching, I decided to devote myself fully to typography by taking a Master's degree.

Joly takes its inspiration is the 18th century Dutch type. It began as a research revival project, as one does when exploring type design history, and rapidly turned into a full contemporary type design project.

Franck Jalleau is a benchmark in international type design. What advice do you have from him?

Yes, Franck Jalleau's teaching was with me throughout my four years of study. We got on very well, and I still hear from him sometimes. It was a lesson in observation, and if I can quote Franck, it's the importance of taking time, knowing that everything is in the micro-details. We don't have to look for artifice to be expressive, and through slight contrasts, a slight difference, we can give a completely different voice to a character. It's also a lot of experimentation: taking a tool and drawing, making traces, making lines, calligraphy without any real objective... Just to see what the hand can allow me to create.

So, yes, if I'm to follow a phrase from Franck Jalleau: it's about taking your time, experimenting and... the power of the gesture! It's really the power of the gesture that will prevail above all else.

Joly is a Dutch inspired font family designed especially for complex text layouts: multiple optical sizes (Text, Headline, Display) makes it a complete type tool. Elegant and eloquent, Joly is a trustworthy tool to get to the heart of your readers.

You're one of Blaze Type's regular collaborators. What was your introduction to the foundry like?

During my studies, I was able to carry out an internship at various French and European foundries to observe the inner workings of such structures. I was able to work on various projects, and it was in 2021, at the end of my studies, that I came into contact with Matthieu. Initially, he gave me critical feedback on the Joly, an interpretation, a revival of a character started during my studies. Then we decided to expand it, adding weights and optical fonts, with a view to publishing it with Blaze Type.

Your collaboration seems to be a positive one, since you have continued to work together...

Following the publication of Joly, Matthieu trusted me with other projects, so I was able to start designing and extending typefaces with him. Like Sigurd or Rules, and I also took part in the creation of some custom typefaces, at the request of communication agencies or direct customers (Fix Studio, Mont Saint-Michel, NTSAL, Republic Crypto, Hall & Partners).

As for the two families I mentioned, I was the only one working on these projects alongside Mathieu. We communicated a great deal, going back and forth, exchanging ideas on a fairly daily basis, asking questions about the different shapes, how to interpret the family? It was a long dialogue.

Sigurd is a font family inspired by the Norse hero of the Nibelungen Saga, Siegfried, from medieval literature. Sigurd is a font family gathering its inspiration from Norse mythology in the shape of swords, feudal armours and medieval lettering work. It's an elegant typeface family with a strong design construction and tons of alternate characters and various swashes. Allowing a wide variety of uses in text layouts for display uses.

Emeritus is a blackletter font drawing its inspiration in all possible eras of Blackletters & Fraktur designs. In the early stage of the design process, Emeritus was thought like a modern reinterpretation of the rotunda style. We first started the design process by establishing the historical structure following the original ductus. We wanted to enrich this particular set of rotunda and blackletter font shape with some modern high contrast details in order to create a unique aesthetic.

Shortly after these projects, you collaborated on Emeritus (2021, Tim Vanhille, Léon Hugues, Matthieu Salvaggio), a pure blackletter.

It's a typeface that was started by Matthieu, and my role was to refine the typeface, extend it and ensure that the final tool was completely functional, going beyond calligraphy to achieve a truly typographic aesthetic.

We came up with those thin organic terminals connecting somehow to calligraphic ornament style. Those details give some quite interesting dancing rhythm to the font which make the letters look alive. With a mix of rounded rotunda inspired shapes and the sharpness of the BLZT style, Emeritus establishes itself as a classic for posters, movies or web design projects that need a strong gothic approach.

Did you take part in the development of the Rules Slab and Rules Gothic versions?

I wasn't involved in these projects. Malo Haffreingue did. And it was very interesting for me to see how a project I'd started with Mathieu could evolve later with other designers; how they interpreted an initial base to create new styles.

Updated in 2024 after an extensive work on the overall structure of the font family to bring forward a wider range of possibilities in terms of axis, weights and width. Rules font is a contemporary interpretation of the neo grotesque font era, with an edge. Rooted in Swiss Modern type inspiration and built with a strong structure in the respect of type design tradition. Rules font features modern capitals (optically-matching widths). Next to no contrast in counter-forms. Closed edged terminals and an elegant twist bringing a colorful aspect to optical gray in text layouts. The whole font family is topped off with squared endings, giving the whole font family a great pace.

Which typeface from the Blaze Type catalog do you secretly admire, and why?

It's going to be typefaces like Swirl or Tangley because I have a guilty pleasure for script typefaces. So it's been fascinating, he's in dialogue with the designers at the time too. I've been able to see the evolution of these projects. They're really great. And on the other hand, I really like Raphaël Lefeuvre's Square, which combines an original design with quite strong technical constraints, to get into this square space, to have identical outlines when there are extremely different weights.

Apart from his very display typefaces, I also really like Hugo Jourdan's Slussen, with its ability to really develop an extraordinary tool, which allows others to cover all the uses between the different weights, the italics, the monospaced version... This typeface is an absolute monster of work, and it's impressive how well he's managed to develop it.

Osmose is a neoclassical grotesk font rooted with geometric sans-serif features. The geometric inspiration is stated in the matching of the H-height and ascenders. Some details—such as the punctuation— were inspired by cursive old scriptures; it’s a nice way to break the monotony of long texts. By adding this layer made of smooth curves and perfectly round circles the effect can be even more detectable (and appreciable). Osmose's capitals’ width are thought in the same way: they are built in a wider shape; allowing even more ‘flavour’ to the quality of the reading process. The Osmose font comes in five styles, all based on the same side bearings which allows great flexibility, and yet, optical constancy when it comes to text layouts.

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