Font Friday #149

Lucette

Lucette shows a witty confidence. The top heavy contrasting sans-serif typeface shown on a mobile phone in the heading, body text and a big pullquote: “Quero a vida sempre assim. Com vocĂȘ perto de mim. AtĂ© o apagar da velha chama.” — form “Corcovado”, a beautiful Basilian tune ‹ by Tom Jobim, submitted by Pablo

Sans-serif typeface

from Frenchtype
designed by Alice Savoie

16 Styles

7 Weights: Thin to Black
Plus Black Display
with matching italics

Best for

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

License starting

around $100 (bundle)

Specialty

A playful sans-serif typeface with an unusual top-heavy design, ideal for striking editorial, web or app designs.

Get Lucette

My Lucette Font Review

This is something rare and unusual. The sans-serif typeface Lucette by Alice Savoie takes up the idea of a so-called “top-heavy” design. This means that the upper parts of letters show more contrast. It is also the reason why Lucette makes a quite unique impression, coming across as unusual, quirky, playful, even a little goofy.

Top Heavy Coolness – Lucette shows an unusual distribution of contrast. It is most obvious in the bold weights, but you can still feel it in Regular and Lighter styles. The upper part is always heavier, giving the typeface its unique flavor. Contrasting Thin. The typeface works surprisingly well in smaller sizes, thanks to the generous x-height, its compact proportions and distinctive characters. This makes Lucette a treat for striking app or web designs even.
The top-heavy design can even be seen in delicate Thin style.

Conventionally, stroke contrast is distributed evenly across horizontal lines, but Lucette emphasizes the upper parts. This is still present in the lighter weights. When comparing it with Massilia, which like Lucette took inspiration from classic Antique Olive, you see what I mean. Gravity suddenly feels differently.

Lucette Ultrabold vs. Massilia Extra Bold.
When comparing Lucette with Massilia, you see the unusual contrast clearly

What strikes me is that Lucette has both very organic and very technical aspects to it. Looking at the “s”, the top-heavy contrast feels bobby and soft, while the articulated wedge-shaped cut-outs, or the horizontal crossbar at the “k” feel more constructed. It creates an interplay I really find interesting.

lower case s with a top heavy design, wedge-shaped cut-out joints, k with horizontal bal and flared stroes and vertext shown at the lower case v.
Lucette playfully combines round and angled shapes

The typeface also comes with a Black Display style, that is taking contrast, playfulness and its wild shapes to the limits. See my comparison here on Patreon.

Lucette pushes it to the limit. Unlock on Patreon

I would not recommend Lucette for long format reading, since the unusual contrast might be distracting in a lot of copy. But it works surprisingly well in smaller size, given the generous x-height, loose spacing and distinct characters. So maybe it is something for a brave app or web design?

Font Pairings for Lucette

Lucette is a quite dynamic, contrasting sans-serif typeface. If you look for something similar but less fancy for copy, pair it with clean Muller Next, or one of the other suggestions.

Lucette
Lucette
  • Headings
  • Copy
  • UI Text
Muller Next
Muller Next
  • Headings
  • Copy
  • UI Text
Palanquin (free)
Palanquin (free)
  • Headings
  • Copy
  • UI Text

Learn more about pairing typefaces using the Font Matrix.

What do you think about it this unusual design? Is it heavy on your heart or lifting your soul? Tell me in the comments!

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Edition #149, published

2 Comments

  1. I licensed Lucette from FutureFonts a good while ago (and may have mentioned it to you). I agree that it looks great .. which is what prompted me to get it 🙂

    In practice, in a text/blogging application might not have been its best milieu. From one pov, it could look a little comical (sponge bobby, one of my children said) in headings. In smaller sizes the descender on the ‘g’ disappeared a little, and the bottom in general could look a little light.

    I loved the name.

    Reply

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