I learned about Fred Smeijer’s Quadraat over the summer, which let me admire its blackjack-in-a-knife-fight aesthetic. And that is prehaps the truly endearing quality of the font: it just looks a bit rugged, possibly hung over. It has something like a scruffy unshaved drunken-master look. Except dutch, not chinese.
It’s entirely possible you’ve seen this in your type library, maybe even set a line or two of text and then switched to some pansy-ass venetian after remarking: oh that’ll look too messy on the page. Look, nobody said life was easy. Quadraat’s like a cast iron pan: you’ve got to season it a bit, give it some tough love and a few charred steaks. Don’t even try to use soap on it. That ruins cast iron.
Or, it’s possible you’ve used Quadraat’s more homely, take to dinner with the folks younger sibling Arnhem. Sure, it’s a good choice—it’s an easy choice—but really, why not let your hair down, maybe give it a tousle once in a while? Quadraat takes its Bowmore neat. So what if Quadraat likes a smoke now and then? It’s not like it’s been living under a rock these past ten years.
But real draw, once you get past the analogies, is the almost frenetic calligraphic qualities of both the italic and normal weights. The bold and small caps have a raw… essence, but there’s a quiet confidence in the broad-nibbed roman and the angular moments in the italics. It’s like a little lion cub growling for the second time.
—marcos
