Letter forms from the typeface Cassius by Mathieu Réguer
I really should have gone to Paris this weekend. I didn’t have anything terribly exciting to do here in London, two of my elder sisters were there for the weekend. I don’t know why I didn’t realize all of this before Sunday evening. Had I been there, I’m sure I would have tried to drag them to Ladurée, try to talk them into taking a boat ride on the Seine, or maybe I could finally make it to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I blame them, in part, for not getting me their itinerary sooner, let this be a lesson to all you Hunts!
However, had I been in Paris this weekend, I can tell you that I would most likely have been taking pictures of lettering more than of architecture. On my previous two trips to the center of the cultural universe, I was struck by the occurrence of what seemed to me to be a very French treatment of the majuscule R.
Whereas the typical, Anglo/American treatment of this letter is to give it a nice sturdy leg to lean on, the French R seems to tend more often to a more graceful tail, or swash. Of course you can find this as a feature also applied in type and lettering in other cultures, but it seems (to me at least) that the French have incorporated this feature into every style of lettering imaginable, from Lombardic flavored majuscules, to inscriptional forms and even applied to Egyptienne lettering styles.
After my returning from my first trip to Paris, I decided to test my idea that French R’s tend to favor a swash formation. Without looking at the current state of Mathieu Réguer’s typeface project, Cassius, I asked him to show me his capital letter R. I was not disappointed in the result, and you can see all the beauty of the French R in the illustration above. Thank you for humoring me, Mathieu.
P.S. It has been said (presumably by none other than Eric Spiekermann) that all French design is related to the olive. I’m not quite sure what the connection is in conjunction with this particular R shape, but if you can figure it out, Please tell me.
More specimens of the French R in specimens of Parisian lettering.
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