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Antipol

The horizontal stress sans-serif display typeface Antipol on a phone screen set in the heading and a pullquote.

Display typeface

by Roland Hörmann

26 styles

5 weights: Hairline to Bold
3 widths: Regular to Wide
All with matching italics

License for web/app usage

Single: from € 27 (web), € 270 (app)
Family: from € 203 (web), € 2,030 (app)

Best for

  • Headings (display text)
  • Long reading text (body text)
  • User Interfaces (functional text)

Specialty

Horizontal stress, baby!

My thoughts on Antipol

The sans-serif display typeface Antipol by Roland Hörmann is near and dear to my heart. Not just because Roland’s office is next to the hip coworking office in Vienna, where I was located for 12 years. (You know, the time before I left to live a boring small-town life with three kids and a house. Gee, I hope my family still does not read my newsletters, even though I forced my wife to be the first subscriber 😅). Antipol it is also special to me, because using it in a project makes me feel that I’m still cool, and young, and urban.

Antipol is not against you! Or SHOULD it be? Of course not. It’s against boring visual conventions.

But what’s exactly so fontastic about it? It’s a so-called horizontal or reversed stress typeface. This means it deliberately flips the aspect ratio of horizontal and vertical stroke widths. And this is what breaks our visual conventions.

On the left, the classic stroke widths we are familiar with, the horizontal lines are thin. On the right, with Anipol the horizontal lines are thick.

This is the reason why Antipol looks so cool, and arty, and a bit crazy. Like the popular typeface Antique Olive from the 1960s. So it also has some retro vibes going on. I can vividly imagine it taking you back to a 70ies sci-fi poster for example. Antipol is not suited for long reading text. If you have only a little text, it will work fine, and sprinkle it with extra personality. So use it in titles or headings, maybe in a short paragraph. What comes quite handy are the three different widths and weights when you apply it in a striking display.


What do you think? Is Antipol something for an upcoming project? Tell me in the comments below!

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7 Comments

  1. Antipol, you know me, Oliver, I chose the skinny one. Antipol is the star of the movie poster or a book cover.
    Surprisingly, Antique Olive, you know it! I thought no one knows that noble font. It’s like an old lady from a kingdom family.
    On the other hand, Antipol is more of a genderless, modern type. It has a futuristic vibe in the star-like cross on T. Antipol is Gemini in astrology. It has two or more personalities. Look at the wide version, at one point it’s cowboy-induced, Western cartoonish. In other, it’s all future-spacey. Very intriguing, yet naive at the first glance!

    1. No wonder why I do what I do – creative writing. Thanks to, often, an ever-inspiring content like yours.💫

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