Taking its name from the arabic word for “king”, Malik is a flared sans serif typeface family designed in 2020 by Andrea Tartarelli. The designer wanted to find a way to bridge the classical letterforms of Roman Old Style typefaces with the readability of contemporary sans typefaces. This was achieved by using the so-called flared serif that emerges gradually from the stem of the letter, ending in a sharp angle. It’s something that also reminds of the peculiar shapes of the Simoncini Method, invented by italian type designer Francesco Simoncini to get a sharper definition of letterforms. To this blend of classical elegance and modernist expertise, Malik adds the calligraphic influence of modern masters like Frederic Goudy or Ed Benguiat, visible in signature details like the reverse contrast uppercase B, or the calligraphic lowercase k.
Malik also means “owner”, and this font surely wants to rule the page. It manages to be extremely readable when used in body text size, but looks surprising and expressive in display use. The inclusion of the Malik Heavy Display weight, with its black texture balanced by deep inktraps, allows for striking logo design. The weight range of the family is extremely wide, including a Book alternative to the Regular weight for fine-tuning readability, a range of light display weights and a solid choice of bold weights for branding, all coming with matching true italics. The 16 cuts of Malik have been equipped with all the features you need to solve your editorial and design challenges, including a wide language coverage (thanks to over one thousand latin and cyrillic characters) and a complete set of open type features (including small capitals, positional numbers, case sensitive forms). Alternate characters and stylistic sets allow you to fine-tune your editorial and branding design by choosing variant letter shapes.
Malik is the typeface for everyone who wants to design like a king…or like he doesn’t care who the king is!
