Livory and Brevia

I love these fonts, now adopted to our website and shop signs. I’ve sometimes spent time looking at fonts and wondering what makes some so appealing. I found these two with lots of searches, when I was designing and setting up our slow food restaurant and art project at mima (Lots more about this project in the coming months). We had previously had a simple Palatino Linotype - painted large for the Waiting Room - I remember that my daughter had a children’s book back then with oversized ‘formal’ lettering - that looked really cool on the page. This Livory font I found (This paragraph) from the Hannes von Döhren font foundry - is a slightly more relaxed, open and friendly version of a Palatino Linotype I’d say… and Brevia looks like a sort of Sans Serif of the same font - although I don’t know if it is officially.

Back in 2016, we decided to adopt Brevia as our font for our new restaurant at the art gallery - which was also an ‘artwork’ installation of a community cafe. and adopting its not-quite-matching pair of Livory for The Waiting Room.

I organised a bunch of participatory community art events at the gallery to ‘Build The Cafe’ - including a Neon Workshop with Wakefield Mobile Neon Workshops - and we made a big old Neon sign for THE SMELTERY - which lit up Centre Square for the next 3 years…

I mention all of this now, because we hope to get our traditional sign writer Pip back to The Waiting Room tomorrow to paint up our new shop sign… Its going to be beautiful and exciting - riffing on our established themes… Big reveal tomorrow perhaps.

The main body of our Waiting Room book will use Livory and Brevia.

Our Brevia Smeltery Neon Sign… I’ll post lots more about this project in the coming months.