Galmi was initiated in 2017 as a school project during my studies in the type design MA at the École Estienne (Paris). At that time, a key exercise was to design a font and a poster evoking the city where we lived and worked during an internship abroad. This exercise was a joint effort between the graphic design course and the type design one. It was a very nice way to design both at the same time and to learn about the back and forth between designing a font and using it in display.

Back then, I had the chance to intern with Rostislav Vaněk & Tomás Nedoma at their joint foundry (which no longer exists), called Signature Type¹1 Signature Type was formed by Rostislav Vaněk & Tomás Nedoma., located in the center of Prague. As I knew this assignment was waiting for me when I got back to Paris, the idea was to gather a lot of potential sources that could inspire this typeface. I took a lot of pictures in the streets of Prague: ephemera, engravings, signage, advertising… I did not have a specific idea and wanted to capture as many diverse references as I could, to give myself the freedom to choose.

At that time of my student life, I had a soft spot for the generous and curvy designs by František Štorm, especially his text typefaces (Biblon, Lexon, Serapion…) and some typefaces by Alejandro Lo Celso (mainly Arlt), where I could feel the same generosity in the curves and weights emphasising the horizontality of typeset text. What interested me so much was the different feelings those typefaces would create at various scales. At text scale they would behave like generously inked printed typefaces, while all their exuberant details and strong design decisions would be revealed at a larger scale. As a student, I felt those kinds of designs were very pedagogical in a way, making this basic type design relationship between scale and personality very explicit.

With this in mind, I was really trying to find anything in Prague that would feel the same and could be a starting point for a typeface in this visual ballpark. Contrary to my expectations, while touring the busy streets of central Prague, I found mostly Art Nouveau letterforms from the beginning of the 20th century, or more recent uses of ITC University Roman. (This typeface, inspired by Speedball hand-lettering and designed at the Letraset Type Studio in 1983, is massively used in public space.)

As I knew I did not want to go for an Art Nouveau Jugendstil typeface, I decided to base the design on a more conceptual approach that would merge my initial interests with the city of Prague. I wanted to draw generous, curvy, odd shapes, and this resonated when I heard about the Prague legend of the Golem: a mass of clay brought to life when sacred letters are written on it. I felt the concept of clay modelling would be a good starting point to draw generous typeforms.

Because my expectations were not met by the vernacular letters of the Prague urban landscape, it was inside antikvariats (bookshops) that I found my way. In printed books, I more easily found references and typeforms that could fit the general concept of a soft typeface inspired by clay modelling. I discovered books composed with typefaces by Czech type designers & lettering artists of the 20th century that I had never encountered before: letterforms moving between dynamism and softness, with a sense of physical matter and weight. This is where the connection to the clay and Golem concept became concrete, rather than a purely narrative starting point. Among them, the most striking was probably Vojtěch Preissig.

His work seems more expressive than that of most of the other designers I discovered at the same time. In that sense, he makes a perfect bridge between text letterforms and the materiality so needed for the concept of clay.
“Preissig’s general artistic style was to be deeply involved in experimentation with various techniques, giving preference to lino and wood cut. Indeed, most of his typefaces were made directly in the material without initial drawings. The character of his designs demonstrates, quite frankly, the influence of Expressionist publications, which used woodcuts intensively”
—Veronika Burian²2 Veronika Burian, Oldřich Menhart — calligrapher, type designer and craftsman, University of Reading, 2003, p. 20

The several attempts/experiments³3 Otakar Karlas, The Typefaces of Vojtech Preissig, Academy of Arts, architecture and design in Prague, Prague, 2009, p. 17. of the Preissig Antiqva, especially the soft black inked ones, but also the linocuts are really showcasing this malleability of the outlines around a blurry Antiqua structure. The lettershapes are emerging from the materiality of the substance.

“In 1912 the Czech designer, Vojtěch Preissig was creating idiosyncratic expressionistic types for use in his graphic publications. The culmination of his experiments was Preissig Antiqva, which was subsequently cast by the State Printing House in Prague, 1925”
—Jeremy Tankard⁴4 Jeremy Tankard’s StudioType on Brucker typeface.

During that process of shaping the letters like clay, I attempted to draw the shapes of Galmi by removing material from a plain mass. I made this experimental version by trying to remove as little “clay” as possible. It resulted in a version where the clay was not carved out of the counters. The result was too experimental, but it allowed me to see that the dynamism of the outer curves had to be a key element to keep Galmi from looking gooey.

Looking at other references after this experiment, I quickly understood that among the Czech designers of the 20th century, Oldřich Menhart is one of the most iconic. Some visual parallels can be drawn between Preissig Antiqva (its sharp versions) and Menhart’s Figural: both share a baroque Antiqua structure and proportions. But Menhart’s work offers a typographic synthesis of this model, compared to the more artistic, “private press” approach of Preissig.

“Contrary to this early group of artists, Oldřich Menhart concentrated more on typeface design and calligraphy. He did not consider himself an artist, but more a craftsman, upholding the revival of fine typography and the importance of calligraphic roots.”
—Veronika Burian⁵5 Veronika Burian, op.cit. p. 24.

This more refined approach shows in the calligraphic high contrast, compared to the roughness of previous linocuts (fig. 5), which implies thicker thin strokes for technical reasons. The idea of maintaining a high contrast is not straightforward when thinking of clay modelling, but it is an essential feature for keeping a text-ish use for Galmi and for keeping it within the scope of the original idea.

“Its calligraphic approach determines not only the way the main and secondary strokes alternate on a left-inclined letter axis, as well as the differentiated width proportions of individual letterforms.”
—The Heritage of Oldřich Menhart, about Figural⁶6 Briefcase Type on Oldřich Menhart’s Figural, The Heritage of Olřich Menhart.

Another important feature of Galmi that has been influenced by Czech sources is its dynamic structure, between upright and italic, as if the design were in an intermediate stage of being modelled. Although it is an upright typeface, some structures are clearly italic, especially the “m, n, h, u” with very deep connections, or the schoolbook “g, y”. To the same end, some letters with several stems feature different axes. This took inspiration from the gentle axis of Malostranská Antiqua Cursiva by K. Dyrynk. Typical structures visible in Menhart’s Manuscript Antikva Italic, like the long “f” and the looped “k”, were also very interesting, emphasising the hybrid look of Galmi.

The “in-between” structure of Galmi, emphasised by the various slants, becomes visually a sense of movement and dynamism. The letterforms embody the motion of clay being displaced and shaped. In this idea of dynamism, all the tricks playing on the relationship between inside and outside shapes have been used to emphasise the speed.

With the same idea as the multiple slants coming from the italic structure, the sense of movement of Galmi has been exaggerated with rotated counters of various slants as well. It brings Galmi in the direction of a caricatural design, but also creates a visually interesting paradox that answers the initial brief: we notice very dynamic oval bowls, but the inner rotation puts more of the weight on the horizontals, optimising readability in a manner similar to the hypothesis in Excoffon Book⁷7 Bruno Bernard’s blog on Excoffon Book..

As Galmi was definitely playing with this balance between stability and motion, another core element of normalisation and repetition has been modified to reach this threshold: the stems. This is another tribute to Czech typefaces, referencing the trapezoid stems of Menhart’s Manuscript Antikva.

Once the core concepts were set, the design of Galmi’s lowercase was quite straightforward. More typical structures inspired by the same references were added. One is the very enclosed design of the letter “a”, referring to Dyrynk’s Malostranská Antiqua. The other is the “z” with a descending tail, seen in many of Menhart’s typefaces⁸8 Villu Toots, Contemporary Type, Kniga editions, Moscow 1966, p. 264..

“The characters [of Dyrynk] have in general a pleasant stroke width, and the typeface appears both vivid and dynamic”
—Veronika Burian⁹9 Veronika Burian, op.cit. p. 18.

As the core concept of Galmi was to appear kneaded and malleable, serifs were not an obvious choice. But they reinforce the hybrid nature of the typeface: sitting between general softness and more mechanical elements. The spiky shape of the serifs also echoes the pointed, scriptural energy found in the uppercase. The serifs were also important to keep Galmi within the visual field of text-ish typefaces. They are only applied on top of the stems, so they never become too prominent and don’t compromise the overall modelling concept.

The uppercase structure is less prone to softness or speed, so it was harder to define what to pair with the existing hybrid set of lowercase. In the very first attempt of Galmi, the serifs were not triangular but more squarish with soft connections so the uppercase set had a very static feeling.

The idea of the caps is to fit the lowercase system, with triangular stems and oblique axes for the round letters, without slanting the structure, which would have been too italic. Another kind of dynamism was introduced on the serifless horizontal strokes of “E, F, L, T, Z” through a gentle curvature. The triangular serifs appear on top of the letters and are suppressed at the bottom to mimic the quick calligraphic ductus. Areas with a back-and-forth movement of the nib, like “A, M, N, V, W”, are rendered spiky, and the same has been applied to the triangular lowercase “v, w, y”.

The figures of Galmi showcase various shapes depending on the intended use. The tabular versions have an open “4” to save space within the fixed-width constraint. The lining versions have serifs on “6, 9”, emphasising the visual link with the uppercase. The old-style versions have an angular “3”, which realigns the figure horizontally within the old-style figure set.

I decided to extend the family through a wider range of weights, going in the darker direction. I was curious to see how those unusual features might exist in a more exaggerated setup, once the weight is heavier and the axis more rotated. Galmi is finally available in 5 weights, from Regular to Black. The Black style becomes much more caricatural and display-oriented, but it is a nice way to explicitly show all the design choices led by the concept of clay modelling in Galmi. When the counters are reduced, the sense of materiality becomes stronger, making the visual solutions already present in the Regular more visible. This is a similar relationship between scale and personality to the one I was interested in at the beginning, but here pushed through weight rather than size.

Set in full caps, Galmi has a hand-brushed poster feeling. This comparison gave me the original idea of having a stylistic set for titling accents. This allows tight leading in full-cap composition. It evokes the glyph-specific solutions found by lettering artists to optimise poster setting and composition.

Alternates provide an opportunity to simplify some of the original shapes if required in specific settings. There is a simpler “z”, more expected for an upright design. Adding to the speedy, handwritten feeling of Galmi, there are a serifless “f”, a disconnected “Q”, an ampersand based on the angular “3”, and a French “7” with a crossbar, which fills the white space around it.

Galmi is a name that evokes “golem”, a way to reference the main concept of Galmi: being created and formed out of the materiality of clay, with strong visual references to the city of Prague.

I would like to warmly thank all the people that encountered Galmi and gave their valuable feedback along the way when it was a school project: Margaret Gray, Franck Jalleau & Michel Derre. Rostislav Vaněk and Tomás Nedoma for having me for 3 months at their studio in Prague. Fanny Hamelin for her feedback on the final re-designed version. Quentin Creuzet for helping Galmi’s implementation online. Samar Zureik for her support and opening new horizons to this typeface.

All images are property of their respective authors:
•Fig 03 Poster of Wegener’s Der Golem, 1920 (last accessed 13 July, 2026)
and Snapshot of Wegener’s Der Golem, 1920, ©Filmmuseum München (last accessed 13 July, 2026)
•Fig 04 Preissig Antiqva 1912-1913, The Typefaces of Vojtech Pressig, Academy of Arts, architecture and design in Prague, Otakar Karlas, Prague, 2009, p. 12.
•Fig 08 Oldřich Menhart, Figural Obyčejný and Figural Kursiva Ozdobná (Regular and Italic) Bearbeitet von Michael Gills, Letraset, Klingspor Museum (last accessed 13 July, 2026)
•Fig 10 Karel Dyrynk’s Malostranska Antiqua Cursiva, 1927, Luc Devroye (last accessed 13 July, 2026)
•Fig 11 Oldřich Menhart’s Manuscript Antikva Italic, 1943, Luc Devroye (last accessed 13 July, 2026)
•Fig 14 Oldřich Menhart’s Manuscript Antikva, in Villu Toots, Contemporary Type, Kniga editions, Moscow 1966, p. 264
•Fig 16 Karel Dyrynk’s Malostranska Antiqua, 1927, Luc Devroye next to Oldřich Menhart’s Figural Obyčejný and Figural Kursiva Ozdobná, 1950s ©The heritage of Oldřich Menhart (last accessed 13 July, 2026)
•Fig 17 Oldřich Menhart’s Manuscript in Villu Toots, Contemporary Type, Kniga editions, Moscow 1966, p. 223