The initial brief for Alara started with my interest in the Pharaon typeface. It is a slab serif produced by Deberny & Peignot in 1932. Since the beginning, the idea was not to draw a slab serif revival of this source but to transfer its proportions and interesting details into a sans serif design. At that time, I aimed to experiment with the quirkiness such a process could bring to a sans serif. It was also a way to play around with the common idea that the first lowercase sans serif fonts were made in the 19th century by removing the serifs on “Figgins looking” slab serif. However, Pharaon was released approximately a century later, those typical “Industrial Revolution slab serifs”. It brings a different flavour with more geometry to this “clip off the serifs” concept, with a more geometric approach.

Pharaon is mostly visible in “Divertissements typographiques nº5”, Deberny & Peignot, 1932 (A publication to showcase their fonts and potential uses). It consists of 3 weights (Maigre, DemiGras, Gras) and a special 4th display style called “Blanc” (White). This last member is a full caps openface that features a thin white line in the middle of the stems.

I decided to start from Deberny & Peignot’s Pharaon for different reasons. The first one was the overall flavour of this slab serif. It has wide proportions and a strong visible contrast. Those two elements are the consequence of the “Egyptian” design: On one hand, the long rectangular serifs take up a lot of space and push the proportions to the wide side. On the other hand, the visible horizontal contrast also influences the serif’s height, which has to be a bit thinner. The shoulder-to-stem connection has an even lighter weight for the lowercase, emphasizing Pharaon’s “contrasted” feature. While the width and contrast can be seen as a direct result of the slab serif design, it's also worth noting that in this specific typeface, the contrast is more pronounced than usual.

I was thinking that those exagerated features coming from the serifs would create interesting effects once they would be removed. At least, they would bring some slab identity into the sans serif. The other reason that motivated me to work from Pharaon was its concept and context in which it was created. Specifically, “Divertissements typographiques nº4”, published before Pharaon, showcased Europe. Europe was Deberny & Peignot’s Futura for French market.

“Maximilien Vox recognized Futura’s potential as a best-seller and urged Peignot to acquire it. The typeface was marketed in 1930 by Deberny et Peignot under its commercial name, Europe.”¹1 Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, Publication of an Internet-accessible database resource for Arts et Metiers graphiques, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2002

“With this initiative [Pharaon], Deberny and Peignot align themselves with the German foundries which, based on the geometric shapes and low-contrast of antiques like Futura or Elegant, designed slab-serif faces which achieved notable success: Beton or Memphis.”²2 Michel Wlassikoff, Signes

In that sense, the main idea behind Pharaon was to do the opposite of my objective. Continuing the success of geometric sans from the 30s by offering a serif companion. In this quote, the comment on the contrast is contradictory to my initial interpretation. As the process is reversed, the aims are different, and other standards are expected. For a sans serif, where the contrast is naturally relatively low, the amount of contrast in Pharaon is already substantial and definitely more significant than other similar slabs like Beton (Bauer Foundry, 1929) or Memphis (Stempel Foundry, 1929).

The vertical alignments of Pharaon were already suitable for contemporary standards, as they were made to match geometric sans serif. The ascenders are aligned to the cap height. The x-height was already generous and has only been raised slightly more to fit other PoW typefaces’ heights. The wide proportions are also kept from the source on the key letters like “H, O, n, o”. The width of letters in uppercase and lowercase have more variations in a serif typeface. The “M, N, S, s”, for instance, are much narrower in a contrasted slab serif design and needed to be very widened on the first hand.

The process of serif removal was straightforward. Most of the uppercase letters are very close to Pharaon but in a sans serif interpretation. It is typically the case for letter groups “H, I, U”, “T, E, F, L”, “B, P, R”, “A, V, W, X, Y, Z”, “D, O, Q” were the link with Pharaon is the strongest.

The open letter with a vertical serif like “C, G” required more attention. I had first to decide how to translate those vertical serifs, knowing that this decision would also reflect in some lowercase. I opted for the horizontal cuts, thinking it would create enclosed letters and keep a similar feeling to the serif’s length on the slab.

Also, those endings are flaring and a bit darker on the edge (instead of a monolinear solution). This choice was guided by Alara's contrasting features and served as an alternative way to add some weight, similar to what the serifs would have done in that area. As mentioned earlier, the slab-like “S” didn’t fit the overall wide proportions. The goal here was to create a wide letter with open terminals matching the “C” and “G.”

Shaping the lowercase raised more additional challenge. One of the first issues I encountered was the consistency across weights of the original Pharaon. If the Light is quite close to its reference Futura/Europe with really geometric round bowls, it gets more complex on the Black where “b, d, p, q” has a really mechanical “DIN looking” inner shape, which looks much narrower than the “c, e, o”. To avoid the interpolation from a circle to a geometric oval, I decided to depart from the source. At that point, I opted for angular bowl connections that allowed a smoother interpolation from the Light to the Black. This allowed me to keep the condensation of “b, d, p, q” inner shapes in Bold weights that fit the texture of the typeset text more.

The decision taken for the bowl connections had an impact on the shoulder conections as well. Angular shoulder connections next to rounded bowl ones are quite common in slabs (see Memphis [Stempel, 1929] or Rockwell [Monotype, 1934]), but the reverse is very unusual. Since the bowls were now connected through an angle, the Clarendonesque style was no longer an option This change brought the font somewhere else, with a more humanist type of structure, which was quite unusual given the geometric proportions. Unexpectedly, on smaller sizes, the visual effect was finally still quite close to the feeling of Pharaon.

While the issue with the "c, e, s" was resolved during the uppercase design, the endings of the "f, j, y" were specific to the lowercase. To get away from the grotesque feeling enclosed endings would have brought, their design stayed simple with flat pipe-style endings. It is also a softer way to stay close to the mechanical quirkiness coming from Pharaon on letters like “f” and “r”. In the source, the apex become more pronounced with increasing weight, transitioning from pointy in the light weights to flat and wide in the heavy weights. In Alara, these areas are unified on the flat side to match the overall wide aspect of the font and create a more horizontal feeling.

The family has been extended with lighter and darker weights than the main reference, offering a wider range of styles. Alara is available in six weights, from Light to Black, along with their respective slanted italics.

Alternates provide an opportunity to bring back some of the original Pharaon’s quirky details in a non-default way. This includes the G with a slab spur, which is very typical but might be challenging in certain spacing situations. There are also angular versions of “f, j” to bring back the geometric feeling of those letters on the source.

At the end of the process, I was still missing a way to imitate the particular texture of Pharaon when typeset. I decided to introduce “slab” alternates for simple stem letters “I, i, l” as one would do in a mono design. Those alternates can be combined with the angular “f, j” and closely replicate the crispy angular effect of a text set in Pharaon. The old-school squarish punctuation and symbols emphasize this feeling.

PoW Alara’s name is inspired by a pharaoh’s name who is generally regarded as the founder of the Napatan royal dynasty by his 25th Dynasty Kushite successors and was the first recorded prince of Kush. This naming is a way to pay tribute to Pharaon, the main source that inspired this project.

PoW Alara’s release is a fun step in my contribution to the Proof of Words catalogue as it puts an end to the “already drawn” designs I planned during the initial launch. Now, new horizons are open to extend our retail production. I would like to warmly thank Fanny Hamelin for her most valuable feedback along the process, Quentin Creuzet for his generous assistance, and Samar Zureik for her support.

All images are property of their respective authors:
•Fig 01 and 04 Divertissement Typographique n°5, Deberny & Peignot 1932 by L. Devroye, Fonderie Deberny & Peignot (last accessed 10 March, 2025)
•Fig 02 Divertissement Typographique n°5, Deberny & Peignot 1932 by M. Wlassikoff, Archives Signes (last accessed 10 March, 2025)