ES Build is a geometric font designed by Xavier Erni (Neo Neo) with the assistance of Arthur Schwarz. It draws its inspiration from research into a universal typeface by Herbert Bayer, graphic designer and master of the Bauhaus typography workshop between 1925 and 1928. Bayer’s approach was so assertive that he even removed upper case letters in order to strip the font to its bare essentials. More than a typeface, Universal is a statement, an ode to geometry and reduction. Bayer decided to remove the terminals at the juncture between the stem and the bowl on the letters b, d, p, q, n and m to make way for more circular curves. ES Build retains this feature but offers a less radical and more readable interpretation in the body of the text.
The design is geometrical but optical corrections have nevertheless been applied for aesthetic reasons. Unlike its reference, ES Build offers upper case letters and a complete palette of 675 glyphs. The specificity of the typeface comes from the possibilities offered nowadays by open type features: through a wide set of alternative characters, the user can choose between more or less neutral and readable or more or less geometrical aesthetics, as Bayer wanted it. ES Build is available in 4 weights from regular to bold and their respective italics. A variable font file is offered with the purchase of the complete family upon request.
Objects by Karl Nawrot www.phantomavantgarde.com
Text by Umberto Eco, The Forteresses of Solitude
Winding down the curves of the Pacific coast between San Francisco Tortilla Flat and Los Padres National Park along shores that recall Capri and Amalfi as the Pacific Highway descends toward Santa Barbara you see the castle of William Randolph Hearst rise on the gentle Mediterranean hill of San Simeon. The traveler’s heart leaps because this is the Xanadu of Citizen Kane where Orson Welles brought to life his protagonist explicitly modeled on the great newspaper magnate ancestor of the unfortunate Symbionese Patricia.
ES Build Regular Standard Set
Having reached the peak of wealth and power, Hearst built here his own Fortress of Solitude, which a biographer has described as a combination of palace and museum such as had not been seen since the days of the Medicis. Like someone in a Rene Clair movie (but here reality far outstrips fiction), Hearst bought, in bits or whole, palaces, abbeys, and convents in Europe, had them dismantled brick by numbered brick, packaged and shipped across the ocean, to be reconstructed on the enchanted hill, in the midst of free-ranging wild animals. Since he wanted not a museum but a Renaissance house, he complemented the original pieces with bold imitations, not bothering to distinguish the genuine from the copy.
ES Build Regular Full Bauhaus Set
Having reached the peak of wealth and power, Hearst built here his own Fortress of Solitude, which a biographer has described as a combination of palace and museum such as had not been seen since the days of the Medicis. Like someone in a Rene Clair movie (but here reality far outstrips fiction), Hearst bought, in bits or whole, palaces, abbeys, and convents in Europe, had them dismantled brick by numbered brick, packaged and shipped across the ocean, to be reconstructed on the enchanted hill, in the midst of free-ranging wild animals. Since he wanted not a museum but a Renaissance house, he complemented the original pieces with bold imitations, not bothering to distinguish the genuine from the copy.
ES Build Regular Neutral Set
Having reached the peak of wealth and power, Hearst built here his own Fortress of Solitude, which a biographer has described as a combination of palace and museum such as had not been seen since the days of the Medicis. Like someone in a Rene Clair movie (but here reality far outstrips fiction), Hearst bought, in bits or whole, palaces, abbeys, and convents in Europe, had them dismantled brick by numbered brick, packaged and shipped across the ocean, to be reconstructed on the enchanted hill, in the midst of free-ranging wild animals. Since he wanted not a museum but a Renaissance house, he complemented the original pieces with bold imitations, not bothering to distinguish the genuine from the copy.
ES Build Medium Standard Set
An incontinent collectionism, the bad taste of the nouveau riche, and a thirst for prestige led him to bring the past down to the level of today’s life; but he conceived of today as worth living only if guaranteed to be “just like the past.” Amid Roman sarcophagi, and genuine exotic plants, and remade baroque stairways, you pass Neptune’s Pool, a fantasy Greco-Roman temple peopled with classical statues including (as the guidebook points out with fearless candor) the famous Venus rising from the water, sculpted in 1930 by the Italian sculptor Cassou, and you reach the Great House, a Spanish-Mexican-style cathedral with two towers (equipped with a thirty-six-bell carillon), whose portal frames an iron gate brought from a sixteenth-century Spanish convent, surmounted by a Gothic tympanum with the Virgin and Child.
ES Build Medium Full Bauhaus Set
An incontinent collectionism, the bad taste of the nouveau riche, and a thirst for prestige led him to bring the past down to the level of today’s life; but he conceived of today as worth living only if guaranteed to be “just like the past.” Amid Roman sarcophagi, and genuine exotic plants, and remade baroque stairways, you pass Neptune’s Pool, a fantasy Greco-Roman temple peopled with classical statues including (as the guidebook points out with fearless candor) the famous Venus rising from the water, sculpted in 1930 by the Italian sculptor Cassou, and you reach the Great House, a Spanish-Mexican-style cathedral with two towers (equipped with a thirty-six-bell carillon), whose portal frames an iron gate brought from a sixteenth-century Spanish convent, surmounted by a Gothic tympanum with the Virgin and Child.
ES Build Medium Neutral Set
An incontinent collectionism, the bad taste of the nouveau riche, and a thirst for prestige led him to bring the past down to the level of today’s life; but he conceived of today as worth living only if guaranteed to be “just like the past.” Amid Roman sarcophagi, and genuine exotic plants, and remade baroque stairways, you pass Neptune’s Pool, a fantasy Greco-Roman temple peopled with classical statues including (as the guidebook points out with fearless candor) the famous Venus rising from the water, sculpted in 1930 by the Italian sculptor Cassou, and you reach the Great House, a Spanish-Mexican-style cathedral with two towers (equipped with a thirty-six-bell carillon), whose portal frames an iron gate brought from a sixteenth-century Spanish convent, surmounted by a Gothic tympanum with the Virgin and Child.
ES Build Semi Bold Standard Set
The floor of the vestibule encloses a mosaic found in Pompeii, there are Gobelins on the walls, the door into the Meeting Hall is by Sansovino, the great hall is fake Renaissance presented as Italo-French. A series of choir stalls comes from an Italian convent (Hearst’s agents sought the scattered pieces through various European dealers), the tapestries are seventeenth-century Flemish, the objects—real or fake—date from various periods, four medallions are by Thorvaldsen. The Refectory has an Italian ceiling “four hundred years old,” on the walls are banners “of an old Sienese family.” The bedroom contains the authentic bed of Richelieu, the billiard room has a Gothic tapestry, the projection room (where every night Hearst forced his guests to watch the films he produced, while he sat in the front row with a handy telephone linking him with the whole world)
ES Build Semi Bold Full Bauhaus Set
The floor of the vestibule encloses a mosaic found in Pompeii, there are Gobelins on the walls, the door into the Meeting Hall is by Sansovino, the great hall is fake Renaissance presented as Italo-French. A series of choir stalls comes from an Italian convent (Hearst’s agents sought the scattered pieces through various European dealers), the tapestries are seventeenth-century Flemish, the objects—real or fake—date from various periods, four medallions are by Thorvaldsen. The Refectory has an Italian ceiling “four hundred years old,” on the walls are banners “of an old Sienese family.” The bedroom contains the authentic bed of Richelieu, the billiard room has a Gothic tapestry, the projection room (where every night Hearst forced his guests to watch the films he produced, while he sat in the front row with a handy telephone linking him with the whole world)
ES Build Semi Bold Neutral Set
The floor of the vestibule encloses a mosaic found in Pompeii, there are Gobelins on the walls, the door into the Meeting Hall is by Sansovino, the great hall is fake Renaissance presented as Italo-French. A series of choir stalls comes from an Italian convent (Hearst’s agents sought the scattered pieces through various European dealers), the tapestries are seventeenth-century Flemish, the objects—real or fake—date from various periods, four medallions are by Thorvaldsen. The Refectory has an Italian ceiling “four hundred years old,” on the walls are banners “of an old Sienese family.” The bedroom contains the authentic bed of Richelieu, the billiard room has a Gothic tapestry, the projection room (where every night Hearst forced his guests to watch the films he produced, while he sat in the front row with a handy telephone linking him with the whole world)
ES Build Bold Standard Set
is all fake Egyptian with some Empire touches; the Library has another Italian ceiling, the study imitates a Gothic crypt, and the fireplaces of the various rooms are (real) Gothic, whereas the indoor pool invents a hybrid of the Alhambra, the Paris Metro, and a Caliph’s urinal, but with greater majesty. The striking aspect of the whole is not the quantity of antique pieces plundered from half of Europe, or the nonchalance with which the artificial tissue seamlessly connects fake and genuine, but rather the sense of fullness, the obsessive determination not to leave a single space that doesn’t suggest something, and hence the masterpiece of bricolage, haunted by horror vacui, that is here achieved. The insane abundance makes the place unlivable, just as it is hard to eat those dishes that many classy American restaurants, all darkness and wood paneling, dotted with soft red lights and invaded by nonstop music…
ES Build Bold Full Bauhaus Set
is all fake Egyptian with some Empire touches; the Library has another Italian ceiling, the study imitates a Gothic crypt, and the fireplaces of the various rooms are (real) Gothic, whereas the indoor pool invents a hybrid of the Alhambra, the Paris Metro, and a Caliph’s urinal, but with greater majesty. The striking aspect of the whole is not the quantity of antique pieces plundered from half of Europe, or the nonchalance with which the artificial tissue seamlessly connects fake and genuine, but rather the sense of fullness, the obsessive determination not to leave a single space that doesn’t suggest something, and hence the masterpiece of bricolage, haunted by horror vacui, that is here achieved. The insane abundance makes the place unlivable, just as it is hard to eat those dishes that many classy American restaurants, all darkness and wood paneling, dotted with soft red lights and invaded by nonstop music…
ES Build Bold Neutral Set
is all fake Egyptian with some Empire touches; the Library has another Italian ceiling, the study imitates a Gothic crypt, and the fireplaces of the various rooms are (real) Gothic, whereas the indoor pool invents a hybrid of the Alhambra, the Paris Metro, and a Caliph’s urinal, but with greater majesty. The striking aspect of the whole is not the quantity of antique pieces plundered from half of Europe, or the nonchalance with which the artificial tissue seamlessly connects fake and genuine, but rather the sense of fullness, the obsessive determination not to leave a single space that doesn’t suggest something, and hence the masterpiece of bricolage, haunted by horror vacui, that is here achieved. The insane abundance makes the place unlivable, just as it is hard to eat those dishes that many classy American restaurants, all darkness and wood paneling, dotted with soft red lights and invaded by nonstop music…
Whereas the indoor pool invents a hybrid of the Alhambra, the Paris Metro, and a Caliph’s urinal, but with greater majesty
- Italic
- Width
- Weights
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Language Coverage
Latin-3 / Mac Roman
Latin Extended-A,
Western Europe, Central Europe,
South-West Europe,
Pinyin
Afrikaans, Albanian, German, English, Assou, Asturian, Low German, Low Sorbian, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Cape Verdean, Catalan, Chambala, Cisena, Cornish, Mauritian Creole, Croatian, Danish, Diola-Fogny, Spanish , Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Ripuary Frankish, Friulian, West Frisian, Scottish Gaelic, Galician, Welsh, Ganda, Gusii, Upper Sorbian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Icelandic, Italian, Kalendjin, Kiga, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luhya, Luo, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makondé, Malay, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Matchamé, Northern Ndebélé, Dutch, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankolé, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romansh, Rumanian, Rumanian roundi, rwa, rwanda, sambourou, Inari sami, northern sami, sangho, sangu, shona, slovak, slovenian, soga, somali, swedish, swiss german, swahili, taita, czech, teso, turkish, turkmen, vunjo, Zulu