Burgues Script released by Sudtipos and designed by Ale Paul is a labor of script type love. At first you see all the swashes and the wild exuberance and you almost sigh for a second: there goes zapfino again, but wait, what’s that, you’ve never seen such a bombastic lowercase y, or should i say, you’ve never seen four such bombastic ys.
The place where Burgues really shines is that it is not so much meant to be set automatically as much as you are asked to delve into the glyphs panel of illustrator so that you may pick out exactly which of five glyphs you might want for any particular letter. In almost all cases, there exists a glyph for setting at the front of a word, in the middle, and at the end plus another flourish glyph that goes with the last letter you typed (the swirly end of the y in Baby). So at the end of your typographic endeavour, you actually feel like you actually had some part in the final composition.
I wish i could match Ale Paul’s description of his own typeface (modeled after the script of louis madarasz), but i can’t. If you do nothing else, it is worth reading what he has to say about burgues script:
If I was an actual poet, my words would be about things I desire but cannot attain, objects of utter beauty that make me wallow in humility, or people of enormous talent who look down at me from the clouds of genius.
But I don’t write poems. My work consists of letters drawn to fit together, that become an element of someone’s visual poetry. I am the poet’s assistant, so to speak. Once in a while, the assistant persists on what the subject of the poem will be. And occasionally, the poet gives in to the persistence. I hope you, visual poet, find my persistence justified in this case.
—marcos
