We've been working tirelessly in the past months to publish this highly-anticipated type family before the year ends. Nearly 3 years in the making, and even though it is a month shy of the Halloween schedule, it's finally here!

🌳 Introducing Balete—the enchanted strangler typeface

Evoked by the eerie structure of the native balete tree infamous in Philippine folklore for being a dwelling place of supernatural beings, the variable type family consists of 18 styles with distinctly drawn Roman and Italics ranging from Thin to Black weights. Check it out now at blazetype.eu/typefaces/balet e ↗

The concept arrived from a happy accident way back in 2021 when I was drawing "Salámat," the Filipino for "thank you," as a year-end post. At first, I scrawled on paper with a flat-nib parallel calligraphy pen, which made expressive curves and dramatic strokes. To digitize, while I'd usually plot the extreme points in straight lines and then add the curves later, the initial plotting of points already resulted in interesting letter shapes. Laziness and cutting corners can sometimes work wonders, I guess.

Fast forward to a year and a half iterating from that piece, I made progress on the original Italic style by completing a basic character set of uppercase and lowercase glyphs and even introduced weights and a few alternates. The slants and proportions were still wonky and unripe, but I loved seeing the fruit of my playful exercise.

Due to the overwhelming love and feedback the project was receiving, I worked on a complementary Roman style next. Italics are naturally more condensed than their Roman counterparts. Since we already had a complete set, I used the italics as a jump-off point by simply adjusting the angle and proportions on the caps, then redrew the lowercase by reinterpreting the exaggerated serifs for the upright.

I found that visiting museums is a great way to get inspired in the middle of a project. The National Museum of Anthropology in Manila houses ethnological and archaeological collections, including artifacts of our ancient Philippine script, Baybayin, and it was fun to learn and draw letters and symbols with intention. (bonus: there was a towering Balete tree installation made of plastic water jugs when we went, perfect timing)

Balete trees can grow anywhere, even on cement cracks, and can usually be identified by their ravenous and majestic roots. A huge thank you to my friends for helping me document these encounters with the trees. Rather than (just) spooked, observing balete trees feels magical and powerful, seeing them thrive and reclaim space.

This project was also the best opportunity to collaborate with some of my favorite Filipino creatives—@darlingkink for illustrating these Philippine mythological creatures with such mystique and grace, and @kittyjardenil for coming up with a super extra fictional detectives folder of printed papers and ephemera. Really loved they turned out!

The full project specimen is now up on Behance ↗ I hope you enjoy the Balete type family!

IN OTHER NEWS:

🚨 Rebel Caps—custom typeface for Rebel Bakehouse

We had the opportunity to work on a custom blackletter-style typeface for the Baguio-favorite patisserie Rebel Bakehouse, extending the rebellious R glyph in their wordmark into a full alphabet. Take a look at the project ↗

📝 Baybayin in Fonts—online talk at TypeLab Asia

Last June on the Typographics 2024 - TypeLab Asia channel, we shared about the inner workings of Baybayin fonts and how type designers would approach developing functioning fonts for the ancient script. We've uploaded the prerecorded presentation on Youtube ↗ in case you'd like to rewatch it.

🏅 Dulungan—Gerard-Unger Merit awardee

Inspired by the Visayas-endemic hornbill "Dulungan," my final project during the yearlong TypeWest Online certificate in type design program I took in 2022, received the Gerard-Unger merit by TypeTogether. See the amazing work of my fellow awardees ↗

🦋 We're on Bluesky—@jadmaza.bsky.social

While most of our updates are posted on Instagram and projects are published on Behance, we're looking to this fresh platform for more short-form updates and share type or Filipino design-related content. Let's see where it goes!

Even though making fonts takes quite some time, we're always thrilled to see or know how you've enjoyed them! Should you find any good use of our typefaces or spot them in the wild, DM/tag us on Instagram @jad.otf or reply to this email :)

Salámat!

Jad Maza • Type Design

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