History

Ilya Ruderman: History is a typeface by Peter Biľak from Typotheque. I designed its Cyrillic set in 2013. History is the so-called layered font: designers can place texts of different styles on top of each other and use colour or other techniques to introduce various interesting effects. 

That is a typeface- construction kit: one skeleton to be dressed in different clothes, a total of 21 styles. History is basically a geometric sans, but in various styles it gets equipped with various swashes, factures, pixelizations, trinkets from different time periods. For example, it has styles that consist of the remains of serifs. There is one style designed by an illustrator — the only one, I think, that I wasn’t in charge of, because it was to be commissioned to the same illustrator. And all this while the proportion, kerning and other parameters stay the same; everything fits ideally. 

Essentially, History — as it is often the case with Peter Biľak — is more than just a typeface. It is an entire conceptual statement. Another reason why it was interesting to me is because I had never designed a Greek set before — here it’s just the uppercase, though, because History is not equipped with any lowercase whatsoever.