Description:

Martina Plantijn is a better Plantin. Informed by the workhorse qualities of Frank Hinman Pierpont’s typeface and expanding upon his research of 16th century type at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Martina Plantijn makes decisive digital updates across its roman and italic cuts.

This new typeface is named after the indomitable 17th century businesswoman, author and head of the largest printing business in the world. Martina was Christophe Plantin’s daughter and married his apprentice Jan Moretus. At five years old she was proofing texts in her father’s printshop — by 25 she was running it. Martina Plantin inspired a lineage of strong, emancipated women who managed the Plantin-Moretus printing house for the next 300 years. She helped lay the foundations of the Plantin-Moretus archives, embodying the true definition of curator.

Continuing from where Pierpont left off, Martina Plantijn improves and rebalances. Like Plantin it’s extremely robust at small sizes, hard-working and modest. Larger sizes reveal practical and opinionated arcs, cuts and terminals. Martina Plantijn is a formidable next-generation Plantin that reconciles historical analogue qualities with a 21st-century digital reality.