Jacques-Germain Soufflot’s plan of the Panthéon in Paris, from 1757.

The Neo Neoclassic

Neoclassical serif typefaces emerged in turbulent times, seeking order. My own typeface, Escalles, continues this quest.

One of my key principles in my type design practice is reduction; it’s how I search for a contemporary expression. I’ve moved from the frank directness of Grotesques to the warm modulation of Renaissance Antiquas. A Neoclassical serif then became the natural next step, allowing me to return to the same question of reduction that occupied type designers over 240 years ago.

To understand this, we need some historical context. Late in the eighteenth century, Europe stood in a strange, electric balance between order and upheaval. Kingdoms were collapsing, new republics were emerging, and books were beginning to shape public opinion.

The age believed fiercely in reason and measurement, yet it was also an era of grand gestures and sharp contrasts. In Paris, buildings like the Panthéon and, a little later, the columned temple La Madeleine became stone manifestos of this taste for order and grandeur. Angelica Kauffmann’s art embodied these ideals through strong light–shadow contrasts.

Angelica Kauffmann’s “The Artist in the Character of Design Listening to the Inspiration of Poetry”, from 1782

Rue Royale toward Madeleine Church, completed 1842, photographer unknown.

Ancient Rome and Greece became models for architecture and interiors. Cities filled with straight avenues and calm façades echoed classical temples. As secular debate gradually became the voice once held by theology, it relied on grids, classifications, and exact rules to bring order to a restless age.

This movement also influenced print and typefaces. Some of the first fully neoclassical typefaces appeared in France in the early 1780s. At this time, publishers were looking for a new visual style that expressed clarity, order, and reason, central ideas of late-eighteenth-century culture.

Rococo furniture design by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, from 1748; a predecessor of the Neoclassical style

Neoclassical furniture design by Michel Herman, from the late 18th century

These typefaces did not appear out of nowhere. They evolved from the transitional types of the early eighteenth century, especially John Baskerville’s faces, which had already heightened contrast, tightened proportions and straightened the stress of the letters.

Engravers and writing masters working with English Roundhand and copperplate maps showed how a pointed nib could create both very thin lines and much heavier strokes. This love of bright contrast and strict structure prepared the way for a new kind of typeface.

English Roundhand, from The universal penman. Engrav’d by George Bickham 1743

In France, a whole printing dynasty shaped this change. François-Ambroise Didot improved the press, introduced vélin paper, and refined typographic measurement. His son Pierre Didot l’Aîné published precisely proportioned editions of Virgil and other classics, turning their Paris workshop into a laboratory for new printing technology and style.

Title page printed by Pierre Didot, 1798

In this setting, Firmin Didot created some of the first fully neoclassical typefaces around 1783, when he was only nineteen. His design introduced all the key features of the style: extreme contrast, a perfectly upright stress, and flat hairline serifs with no calligraphic softness. In Firmin’s work, type became almost architectural, with tall verticals and clear highlights.

Firmin Didot’s revolutionary neoclassical typeface, around 1784.

A later version of the neoclassical typeface by Firmin Didot, designed in 1811.

Pierre François Didot’s 1818 interpretation of their neoclassical typeface.

Firmin Didot’s “modern” types in Paris marked an apparent change. As his letters spread across Europe, they copied his strong contrast and upright strokes. In everyday bookwork, these new designs began to replace “oldstyle” faces such as Jenson or Garamond, with their softer contrast, slanted stress and gently bracketed serifs.

In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni became a leading Neoclassical printer. Compared with Firmin Didot’s work, Bodoni’s letters are squarer and more geometrically systematic: their bowls approach perfect circles, their verticals are very straight, and their joins can feel abrupt and engineered, whereas Didot’s are narrower and more delicate.

Giambattista Bodoni’s neoclassical typeface was first created in the 1790s

Beyond France and Italy, the new style developed its own local character. In the German-speaking world, Justus Erich Walbaum designed a neoclassical typeface with a calmer appearance on the page and a larger x-height, making it more functional and easier to read at smaller sizes.

A later version of the neoclassical typeface by Justus Erich Walbaum, designed in 1800.

In Britain, the story was mixed. Baskerville might have set a native course, but French “modern” faces prevailed, and foundries like William Miller’s adapted their contrast and vertical stress while keeping light bracketed serifs, creating Pica No. 2, dark British Didone suited to commercial work, and later called Scotch Roman.

By the early nineteenth century, some foundries pushed Neoclassical contrast to the point of pure display. In London, Robert Thorne’s Fann Street Foundry exaggerated “fat faces” made hyper-bold Didones spectacular as headlines.

In the 1890s, William Morris criticised the neoclassical type as “gross and vulgar”. He seemed incapable of praising anything that wasn’t a Venetian Renaissance face. Morris was a grumpy guy, yapping about everything, even dismissing the work of one of my favourite printers, Christophe Plantin, whose type he condemned as a “poor and wiry letter”, a judgement I find fundamentally mistaken.

From the 1920s onwards, designers re-examined early Didone faces such as Bodoni and Walbaum for their elegance, producing historically informed revivals for book work and distinguishing these restrained models from the more extreme nineteenth-century versions.

Scotch Roman can be considered as the British branch of the Neoclassical type genre, exemplified by William Miller’s Pica No. 2, from 1813

Over-the-top neoclassical: Fann Street Foundry exaggerated Fat Faces from the 1840s

When I work on a Neoclassical serif today, I’m stepping into a long line of ideas and refinements. From the start, I knew I was drawn to Firmin Didot’s significantly reduced, stripped-back approach. I didn’t want to remake a Didot typeface – I strived to find my own voice within this genre.

Early on, I realised I wanted to develop three versions. One is a high-contrast style for large sizes, where the substantial difference between thick and thin strokes shows off the elegance of the Neoclassical look. A display style that caters to lead text, with more robust details. Plus a lower-contrast style for smaller text, but without drifting too far into Scotch Roman territory.

In my research, I came across an intriguing typeface by the Italian designer Aldo Novarese: Fenice. I was drawn to the way some of its curves are slightly stressed, especially in letters like the uppercase S. But I wasn’t so keen on the overall proportions, or on the very sharp endings, for example, in the lowercase r. Those preferences and reservations became the starting point for my own concept.

Aldo Novarese’s take on the neoclassical, Fenice from 1980, published by the International Typeface Corporation

Some initial sketches exploring some of the fundamental characteristics

Figuring out the terminals proved challenging – early sketch

An early sketch showing the subtle stress in the inner curve of the S

Once I had worked out how to draw the rounded terminals in letters like f, c and r, I had a clear system for the whole alphabet. I based the curves more on Firmin Didot’s work, while the proportions of the letters follow Walbaum more closely. In some details, such as the lowercase a, I pushed the shapes into an even more reduced form. Balancing the round shapes, for example, in the lowercase p, was also a labour-intensive task. I didn’t want to emphasise the vertical strokes as strongly as Bodoni, but I also didn’t like the letters to feel as soft and round as in Didot’s style.

Final typeface Escalles Display – refined neoclassical elegance