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The Pagnol typeface has been designed with a principle developed by A. M. Cassandre in 1937, when the great French designer created the Peignot typeface following paleographic studies on the evolution of letterforms.
Researches in the history of writing have proved that the lowercase “a” is at its origin nothing but the “A” shape transformed through centuries by scribes until the invention of printing. A large number of lowercases meanwhile kept their original shapes. If the scribes’ hand didn’t find the necessity to simplify them, it is only because these letters could be easily written.
Integrating the classical shapes of capitals to the lowercases has already been used, keeping the lowercases which are only a deformation of capitals. Nevertheless, the respect of readability imposes to keep ascendants and descendants from traditional lowercases which serve as optical focus points in a text and make reading easier.
The particularity of Pagnol is to use rounded shapes on top and bottom of pointed capital letters to make them fit with corresponding lowercases (Aa, Mm, Nn, Vv, Ww, Zz). Lowercases proportions are wide, to be in tune with classic lowercase shapes in order to optimize readability.
Five weights in roman and italic have been designed to offer a wide palette of typographic possibilities in all sizes and all paper and screen supports.