The new serif by atipo foundry: Scilla
Interesting side note: ‘scilla’ means ‘bitch’ in Greek, both in the female-dog and the triggered-Karen sense.
Of course, in the case of atipo foundry’s new serif, the name refers to the flower. According to the marketing copy for the typeface, it was inspired by a trip to some botanical garden or other, where the flowers served as the basis for the font’s letterforms.
In any other case, I’d dismiss this as flowery hyperbole, but there’s a reason atipo has always been my favorite foundry: the letters really do look like they are growing on a vine.
Getting a typeface from atipo is a guarantee of quality: you get a professionally-made product, with tons of ligatures, alternates, and even old-style numerals and fractions. These guys really do like OpenType.
The real question is this: does the typeface reach the dizzying heights of perhaps my favorite geometric sans of all time, atipo’s own Geomanist, or that of the classically-beautiful serif supermodel Calendas Plus?
Not to be a downer, but in my opinion, no, it does not. While a beautiful font in its own right, there are a couple of things that disqualify it from the pantheon of atipo’s top typefaces:
It only has one weight but, perversely, offers a condensed/narrow version which, to me at least, looks quite inelegant and pointless. The regular version’s italics are GORGEOUS, though.
It is a very distinctive typeface. That’s not bad per se, but it slightly limits the scope of the font.
Still, atipo offers the typeface with their pay-what-you-want scheme (as long as it’s more than five euros, which, I must say, is ridiculously good value even at ten times that) so I think you should go for it. If you’re into packaging design, poster design or the fashion or beauty industry, you’ll find a use for Scilla.
You can purchase Scilla HERE.
