Eugenio comes out of the Vault
In 2017, when art director Angelo Rinaldi and journalist turned ingenious editorial designer Francesco Franchi set about overhauling La Repubblica, Italy’s popular general-interest daily, Franchi’s watchword for the new design was “looking to the past to go into the future.” This could easily be our mantra. One of them, anyway. We find ourselves in constant dialogue with what has gone before when thinking about what is yet to come, very much part of an ongoing conversation.
Two illustrious forerunners animate the type palette we evolved for La Repubblica: Bodoni and Vignelli. Massimo Vignelli was famously austere in his rationing of typefaces, believing that most were unnecessary, designed merely for “commercial reasons.” The 1991 SVA exhibition of Vignelli’s work, A Few Basic Typefaces, featured only Helvetica, Garamond No. 3, Century Expanded, and Bodoni. During Michael Bierut’s tenure at Vignelli Associates, Futura was also in the mix; by the time Vignelli published his Canon in 2009, he made room for a sixth face: Times.
We took a similarly restrained approach to the new type palette, turning to the paper’s own history for inspiration: When La Repubblica launched in 1976, it was typeset in Bodoni and Times New Roman. In the ensuing years, higher-contrast serifs fell out of vogue for news. We thought perhaps the time was ripe for a reintroduction, particularly in light of more sophisticated technology that wouldn’t completely bork the glyphs’ finer strokes and details.
So, in response to Franchi’s back-to-the-future brief and his desire for a modern, uncluttered look, we came up with complementary serif and sans serif headline typefaces, in part influenced by Vignelli’s frequent use of Bodoni and Futura; plus a text face that we later released as Darby Serif. The headline families, Eugenio Serif and Eugenio Sans, are named after Eugenio Scalfari, who cofounded La Repubblica and served as its editor in chief from 1976 to 1996.
Eugenio Serif, drawn by Miguel Reyes with assistance from Hrvoje Živčić and Christian Schwartz, is La Repubblica’s defining voice, used throughout the paper and reserved specifically for news headlines. Most Bodoni revivals lean on the sharpness of the display cuts; Reyes chose instead to home in on the 16pt and 24pt specimens in a facsimile of Bodoni’s 1818 Manuale Typografico, finding in the smaller types a softness and warmth evocative of the somewhat fretted appearance, characteristic of phototype, that the paper’s original Bodoni took on in the seventies.
Eugenio Serif Poster, sharper and more recognizable as a Bodoni, has more contrast and less softness, and is meant for larger headlines, mainly in print. Miguel also drew a structured italic with a regular rhythm to accompany the roman, sidestepping—at first—the more flamboyant oddities in the source material. More on that in a minute.
Franchi and Greg Gazdowicz wanted a Futura-ish geometric sans to complement Eugenio Serif, again sampling Vignelli’s predilection for using Bodoni and Futura. Vignelli probably would have frowned on adding yet another geometric sans serif to an already overcrowded lane—like, why?—but Greg, unstoppable, figured out a way to make Eugenio Sans work. By concentrating on designing a formidable counterpart/foil for Eugenio Serif, and on making sure it was comfortable to read in longer blocks of text and legible enough for infographics, he found himself venturing into unworn territory.
Terminals end at flat verticals, creating open apertures and airy spaces between letters, preventing Eugenio Sans from feeling derivative or nostalgic. The family’s overall bluntness sets up an astute contrast with Eugenio Serif’s finesse and veers away from Futura’s pointiness, yielding a compelling utilitarian take on the genre. And what makes it work so well for news also makes it work well for interfaces and other public-facing applications; in 2022, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center commissioned a proprietary version of Eugenio Sans. The custom face Greg designed for MSKCC is wonderfully readable across signage, wayfinding, marketing, websites, internal communications, and digital records.
Miguel’s Eugenia rounds out the palette with gusto. An italic for Eugenio Serif wasn’t enough. Out of left field, here comes an entirely autonomous unconnected script that can be used on its own, or as an emphasis or accent for either Eugenia Serif or Eugenia Sans. In 2021, La Repubblica needed new type for the relaunch of D, the paper’s women’s magazine, prompting Miguel to plunge into researching Bodoni’s wild, tentacular italics. The Manuale shows an astonishing array of baroque constructions, echoed in the generous supply of stylistic alternates—looped ascenders, open bowls, loopless fs, curled ds, descending zs, and on and on—that Eugenia offers.
Both Eugenio Serif and Eugenio Sans have remained continually in use in La Repubblica through two redesigns, one in 2023 and another last month. Eugenio Serif is still the paper’s primary typeface and its voice for news, while Eugenio Sans appears in a range of sizes—from drop caps to captions, sidebars, and infographics—and also functions as the primary headline face for Sports and other feature sections. And Eugenia has taken on a more visible role since the most recent refresh, now appearing throughout La Repubblica. After the paper’s latest redesign, we decided to put the finishing touches on the three families, formally fold them into a collection, and move them from the Vault to the main library. The Eugenio Collection is for everyone, but it will always bear traces of Franchi’s vision for a historically informed constellation of typefaces that are thoroughly contemporary, stylish, and uniquely Italian—like Bodoni, like Vignelli.
Read our essay on the Eugenio Collection, replete with fantastic historical images and details.
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