14.12.19

OK, font junkies. It's time to buckle in and get ready for a deep dive into the world of typography. And this time around, it's all about slab serifs — specifically, Egyptian fonts. Now I know what you're thinking right now: 'But Kevin, what is an Egyptian font?' Well, I'll get to that in just a minute.OK, it's been a minute. Let's dive in.

What is an Egyptian font?The idea of an Egyptian font dates back to the. Back then, Napoleon came back from an expedition to Egypt, and all anyone could talk about was how cool that whole culture must have been. Think about it: people living in areas surrounded by pyramids that were essentially giant mausoleums? That's pretty crazy, even by today's standards. And one thing that attracted a lot of attention was the language, specifically, the use of. Now if you look at a cartouche you may wonder how any of that resembles an Egyptian font at all.

And, well, you'd be right. There are no similarities between the two. As it turns out, it was more about timing.Since Egypt was so popular, typeface designers at the time decided that they should leverage that as a naming convention on their newest font styles. They created a series of chunky serif fonts that they would name Egyptian Hieroglyph Slab Serifs.

Again, there was no physical or design connection between Egyptian civilization and these fonts; it was all about timing. Where would I see an Egyptian font?Harry Potter.No seriously, that's what I think of when I see a chunky Slab Serif. Remember the animated newspapers from the books and more specifically the films?

They were likely based on the newspapers of the 1800s, which used Egyptian Hieroglyph Slab Serifs. The same is true of anything that's vaguely steampunk-related, since it too is of that era. Basically, any headline from the 1800s is a good place to start — just don't look too much deeper in the paper.Why? Because the argument could be made that the Egyptian Hieroglyph Slab Serif was made purely as a display type — arguably the first of its kind. You wanted to use it to get attention, not for legibility in small sizes. It was for headlines and headlines only, which makes sense when you try to bring attention to an idea. What kind of Egyptian fonts are out there today?Lots of them.

But how you find them is another matter. It depends a lot on naming conventions. Some people call them Egyptian fonts, which goes back to the history of the design. But today they're more commonly lumped in with Slab Serifs, which technically they are. It's just that an Egyptian font is chunky like peanut butter, and even though there are slimmer variants, a solid example will have both the thick and skinny versions in one package (or at least be available).With that in mind, let me show you a few of my favorites.Cowboy RodeoWhen Americans think of Egyptian fonts, they're likely brought back to our version of the 1800s — the old west.

As an Arizona resident, I'm well aware of our little version of Westworld, except I kind of wish I was a host sometimes. Anyway, Cowboy Rodeo harkens back to that era, and comes in both standard and italic variations. As they say, yee-ha. EponymousI love me some stylistic alternates, and Eponymous is packed with them, giving you — not to beat up a point or anything — options. And another feature that I dig? The scalloped serifs.

Igo8 800x480 data.zip download. Again, it's a little detail, but I certainly like how it flows into the overall design. And with 600 glyphs per font, there are options galore.

Egyptian Revival Font Free Download Handwriting

CA Cape RockCA Cape Rock is fun. I like this fine Egyptian font example because of its curvy Ks, alternates and discretionary ligatures. They make what is a traditionally blocky style into something a little bit more fun. Newslab FamilyNewslab is unapologetically Egyptian, particularly in ExtraBold and BBlack. As I'm sure was intended, it's reminiscent of newspaper headlines, but it's the type of font I could see using for a logo, similar to other options on the list. And not to hit too hard on this one, but when you've got 16 variants of a font, you've got lots of choices. And that's good.