Pretty Neat Fonts, part 1: Athena VKF
If it’s not obvious by the existence of this blog, I spend an inordinate amount of time sniffing around the interwebz, looking for amazing free and commercial typefaces to write about.
Sometimes, the smell of a font will lift me from the ground and make me float around like a midcentury cartoon dog flying towards a freshly-baked cake and other times it’ll make me run away from it like a plate of freshly cooked okras.
However, there are fonts that fall between these two extremes. This are their stories.
#1 Athena VKF
You may not know this about me, but I’m Greek-Cypriot. This means that I’m ethnically Greek, living on the independent island nation of Cyprus. I speak a dialect that mainland Greeks struggle to understand, and I look slightly more Levantine than the average Greek.
However, one thing that almost all Greek-Cypriots have in common with our mainland brethren is that we’re pretty much culturally the same. The average person across Greece and Cyprus will listen to the same music, watch the same films and series and have common pop culture points of reference.
All this intro just to say that I, like all people I know, grew up on a steady diet of old Greek movies. And that’s what Athena VKF is about. Created by Vasilis Kanaris, Athena is a part of a project intended to create a bunch of typefaces, each inspired by a Greek city or town (hopefully, he’ll reach down to Cyprus and create a Larnaca typeface too—or else I’ll do it for him).
And the font is yummy-yummy lovely, son.
Athena contains both latin and Greek characters, so it’s not like you can only use it if you’re Greek or a fraternity bro.
Here’s a test design I did with the font while talking to a friend on the phone
As you can see, the design is pretty retrorific. As far as Greek display fonts go, this is one of the best I’ve ever seen and it’s free to boot!
You can download Athena VKF for free HERE.
