Thanatos is a sharp-cornered serif with a range of styles and optical sizes. With roots in calligraphy and woodcuts, this typefaces feels human and tactile, while keeping usability a high priority.
A typeface two years in the making; my most ambitious project to date. Eight weights, three optical sizes, in Roman and Italic. Chuck-full of features and support for good typography—obviously.
Thanatos has roots in calligraphy and wood carving (a skill I’ve tried to pick up but haven’t gotten very good at)—as evidenced by the ragged cuts on circular strokes, broken counterforms, and subtly concave stems.
Originally conceived as a custom typeface for a short horror film, Thanatos has sharp features and knife-like serifs. However, this aesthetic doesn’t inherently say “Horror”—instead, it lends an air of craftsmanship and solidity. No coincidence, as a strong influence on Thanatos is Berthold Wolpe’s 1930’s Arts & Crafts banger Albertus (used as a credit font throughout Jon Carpenter’s entire filmography).
Albertus’ influence shows most clearly in Thanatos’ contrast structure: horizontal and vertical strokes are almost even in thickness (like a sans serif), while connections between strokes, like the shoulder onto the stem of “n”, are razor thin.
These delicate features are awesome for display sizes, but become muddy when set smaller. Hence, Thanatos Text was developed, which features more robust stroke connections and serifs, as well as wider forms and more generous spacing. The Deck cut forms a welcome solution for the pesky in-between cases.
The Italic uppercase uses the same forms as the Roman, but slanted (and optically adjusted to look nice). The lowercase, however, uses a different ductus (a fancy word for a calligraphic model), which emulates cursive writing motions, but still with the same parameters as the roman to help the two relate. In some letters, this is very noticeable. In others, it’s very very noticeable.
All in all, Thanatos is the most versatile type family I’ve yet released, but does not sacrifice character one bit to do so. I hope that it can help you to focus your death drive on the things important in life.
