Marlene

Ilya Ruderman: Marlene is an award-winning typeface by my classmate at the TypeMedia course at the KABK (Royal Academy of Art in the Hague), Nikola Đurek. As always with Nikola, Marlene is based on calligraphic search. Its vivid and unusual feature is a vast amount of rectangular vertical serifs (take a look at the letter a, for instance) coupled with a humanist plasticity and broad nib. All this combined creates a very special rhythm. And the italics are really beautiful as well.

I was in charge of Cyrillic only for a part of the future super family. First we designed the text Marlene, then it gave birth to Marlene Grande and Marlene Display. Several degrees of displayness for different sizes. 

What is important here? Marlene is a rather narrow serif which is good for Cyrillic, because the text is concise. Besides, you can feel the specific authorship here, a really powerful charisma. And, despite the clear signs of a slab serif, at the same time it is a very agile tool that could be used in a really wide variety of situations.