Sans-serif typeface

from Tunera Type Foundry
designed by Anton Moglia

4 Styles

4 Weights: Regular to Black

Best for

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

License

Free and Open Source

Specialty

A friendly, organic free sans-serif typeface with some special characters to make it interesting and memorable.

My thoughts on Paysage

Paysage is a humanist (dynamic) sans-serif typeface, free and open-source, designed by Anton Moglia. It creates a very friendly and warm impression, conveying something familiar while still standing out with some distinct letters and a slight quirkiness. Paysage certainly was made for long reading text. It is quite wide spaced, so regular body text 18 and 24 px works well. This means, when you set it larger, you should decrease the tracking, as you can see below.

Caps feel soft & compact A friendly and solid typeface for body text. It is interesting enough to stand out, but not too  distracting if you replace the lower case g with the single-story alternate, changing the a as well. In larger sizes, like 35 px here, it makes sense to decrease tracking. It works as small as 14 to 16 px. I wouldn’t set it smaller. Here the medium weight is a good choice to make it sturdier. Increasing the tracking makes it more readable when set that small.
See the alternate characters of the lower case g and a in the second half of the larger paragraph.

The most attention grabbing letter is obviously the lower case g – gee, really like the distinct loop! However, it might be too much for more than one or two paragraphs. This is why the Paysage comes with a single-story alternate. Other notable characters you can find below, overall subtle organic, oval shapes contrasted by harsh cuts and straight lines tie the design together.

The O ist oval shaped. The upper case Q has a flat tail. The number 1 has a serif. The a has a angled bowl. The Ampersand is diagonal, the g has a special tail.
Some characters that make Paysage so special.

If you’re familiar with the popular typefaces from the past century, you might be reminded of Antique Olive, which was first released in the 1960s. I despise Antique Olive. To me, it feels so intrusive and distracting. Paysage is a fresher, less showy approach to the design, much easier to digest.

Paysage Regular is lighter, wider spaced and has a lower x-height. Antique Olive Regular is sturdier, more striking and has a larger x-height.
Comparing it with Antique Olive, you see how Paysage is more spaced out, the bowl of the a is not that concave, and it has square dots.

I only have one issue with Paysage – quotation marks are wrong. They are interchanged and flipped. But since it’s an open-source font, you could fork it and adjust it. Or use guillemets, the French quotes, which work fine 😉.

Wrong quotation marks - it should be 66 99
How it should be (switched and horizontally flipped)

Font Pairings for Paysage

Looking for interesting heading font that pairs well with Paysage? Maybe emphasizing the soft touch of the typeface? Then try Search or one of my other recommendations.

Paysage (free)
Paysage (free)
  • Headings
  • Copy

Learn more about pairing typefaces using the Font Matrix.


What do you think? Is this typeface something for an upcoming project, or do you have a font recommendation? Tell me in the comments below!

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4 Comments

  1. Hi Oliver, thank you for this! Nice one. Hopefully, the quotation marks will get fixed. I didn’t know the Tunera type foundry yet either, they really have some nice and interesting stuff on offer!

  2. Don’t be so hard on Antique Olive, OLIVEr 🙄

    Paysage seems to have just enough quirkiness to subtly bear our attention but serve in a long reading text without distraction.
    Forgive me if you reviewed it, but Role, a superfamily by Matthew Carter is the recommendation to be featured.

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