Octave Display


About

Octave is a revival of an elzevir-style typeface originally designed by Théophile Beaudoire. French Elzevir types, also known as French Old Style types, started in 1846 with Louis Perrin’s cut of the Lyons capitals, a roman titling font. A few years later in 1858, Théophile Beaudoire, sous-directeur of the Fonderie Générale in Paris, transformed the idea of the Lyons capitals into a complete Oldstyle typeface (his Elzévir, named after the Dutch Renaissance printers Elsevier) to enormous success. Elzevirs, or French Oldstyle typefaces were subsquently widely reproduced by type foundries all over the world.

Our revival is based on a cut of Beaudoire’s Elzevir used in a book titled, Histoire de La Musique en Russie by Albert Soubies 1898, and remains fairly faithful to the source material with optical adjustments and improvements made during the digital drawing process. The typeface features a translation-style contrast, meaning the thicks and thins of the letters are largely decided by how a calligraphic broad-nibbed pen would create those letters. Small serifs and heavy-feeling bowls in letterforms give the typeface a cool elegance.

Octave was born from a book about music (hence the name), and features several musical emojis and symbols as an homage to the source material and also to Théophile Beaudoire, who was not only a typographer working in with the latin alphabet but who also engraved punches for musical typography. After spending more time with these letterforms, we also added a series of small caps, and small display caps that are accesible via an OpenType feature that allow for interesting and expressive ligatures and rhythmic typographic compositions that feel like little pieces of typographical music.


Styles

Hairline
Thin
Light
Regular
Medium
Bold
Black

Weight
Optical
  • Octave Display Variable
  • Weight 400
  • Optical 72
×
Variable fonts are a modern type of font file that contain more than one style of a font. For example, Sprig Variable has a weight axis and contains all weights of the font ranging from hairline to super. So instead of having 8 files, a variable font allows you to have just one. In addition to reducing files and file size (which is great for the web ♥) variable fonts provide tons of amazing animation opportunities, and allow you to get super precise. In Sprig Variable you’re not limited to the weights we define, if you need something heavier than regular but lighter than medium, a variable font allows you to get it just right for your project.

Octave Display Hairline
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Thin
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Light
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Regular
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Medium
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Bold
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Black
150px
Weight
Optical
Size

Octave Display Regular
30px
Weight
Optical
Size

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter met in 1987 while attending the Lycée Carnot secondary school in Paris. The two became friends and recorded demos with others from the school. In 1992, they formed a band, Darlin’, with Bangalter on bass, Homem-Christo on guitar, and Laurent Brancowitz on guitar and drums. The trio named themselves after the Beach Boys song “Darlin’”, which they covered along with an original composition. Both tracks were released on a multi-artist EP under Duophonic Records, a label owned by the London-based band Stereolab, who invited Darlin’ to open for shows in the United Kingdom. Darlin’ disbanded after around six months, having played two gigs and produced four songs. Bangalter described the project as “pretty average”. Brancowitz formed another band, Phoenix. Bangalter and Homem-Christo formed Daft Punk and experimented with drum machines and synthesizers. The name was taken from a negative review of Darlin’ in Melody Maker by Dave Jennings, who dubbed their music “a daft punky thrash”. The band found the review amusing. Homem-Christo said, “We struggled so long to find Darlin’, and happened so quickly.”


Glyphs

Basic Latin

Extended Latin

Ligatures and Alternates

Swashes

Ordinals and modifiers

Small Caps

Mini Caps Bottom

Mini Caps Middle

Mini Caps Bottom

Punctuation

Case Sensitive Glyphs

Currency, Symbols, Math, Arrows

Numerals, Superior, Inferior, Fractions

Tabular Glyphs

Emojis


FAIRE Octave Display Emojis

Octave


Octave Colophon


Design
Maxime Gau

Engineering
Sabrina Nacmias

Release
2023

Version
1.0

File Types
.OTF, .TTF, .WOFF2

Supported Languages


Albanian
Asu
Basque
Bemba
Bena
Breton
Catalan
Chiga
Colognian
Cornish
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Faroese
Filipino
Finnish
French
Friulian
Galician
Ganda
German
Gusii
Hungarian
Inari Sami
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Jola-Fonyi
Kabuverdianu
Kalenjin
Kinyarwanda
Koyra ChiiniLatvian
Koyraboro Senni
Lithuanian
Lower Sorbian
Luo
Luxembourgish
Luyia
Machame
Makhuwa-Meetto
Makonde
Malagasy
Maltese
Manx
Marshallese
Moldavian
Morisyen
North Ndebele
Northern Sami
Norwegian Bokmål
Norwegian Nynorsk
Nyankole
Oromo
Polish
Portuguese
Quechua
Romanian
Romansh
Rombo
Rundi
Rwa
Samburu
Sango
Sangu
Scottish Gaelic
Sena
Serbian
Shambala
Shona
Slovak
Soga
Somali
Spanish
Swahili
Swedish
Swiss German
Taita
Tasawaq
Teso
Turkish
Upper Sorbian
Uzbek (Latin)
Volapük
Vunjo
Walser
Welsh
Western Frisian
Zarma
Zulu

The Link Collection

The Sprig Collection

The Luma Collection

The Palme Collection

The Octave Collection