Sirenia is a friendly display face with rounded corners and flowing transitions. The letters have a very organic look and feel as if naturally grown. There are clear calligraphic influences in the typeface since the letterforms are based on a written construction, all drawn with a single stroke. This authentic natural look is ideally suited for lifestyle products, the food & beverage sector, and for sustainable design.
With nine weights and corresponding italics, the typeface offers a wide range of expressions: If the light weights appear elegant and filigree, the typeface changes its character to a dynamic brush typeface in the medium weights, and in the heavyweights, it takes on a fun, almost psychedelic bubblegum aesthetic.
Sirenia’s 1270 characters contain many decorative letters and swash variations for initial, medial and final letters. This gives the designer the possibility to work more as a lettering artist than a typographer and to create lively logotypes according to his own ideas, matching the respective letter combination. This makes Sirenia a great choice for branding, packaging, and advertising. Despite its display qualities, Sirenia is also well-legible in small font sizes and also looks good on the screen.
Process
The early work on Sirenia started twenty years ago with a student project at the University of Applied Sciences Trier with Prof. Andreas Hogan. Using the Blend Fonts feature of the type design software Fontographer, I tried to interpolate different type styles and take inspiration for new letterforms from the fragmentary results.
By blending the unpublished typeface “Somnolence” by my mentor Jens Gehlhaar with a sans serif typeface, I developed the idea of an upright cursive that combines rounded drop-like serifs with the upstrokes of a handwritten script.
The project was later published as a single font under the name “Sadness” by the famous foundry of Swedish type designer Peter Bruhn, who died unexpectedly in 2014.
Two years ago, I stumbled upon my old designs again and was surprised by the good legibility and relevance of the design. The organic shapes and ornamental curves made the font look like a contemporary antithesis to the minimalism of Geometric Sans. I decided to expand the font as a family and completely rework it.
I started with manual drawings and quickly realised that the contrasts between angular and rounded terminals were too much for a single typeface. Therefore, I drew consistent shapes that reminded me of flowing, melting forms. This changed the design so much that I decided to rename the typeface “Sirenia” – a reference to the hanging snouts of manatees.
In the last step, I added numerous alternative letters to the alphabet. The nature-inspired design simply made sense to have ornaments grow and flourish.
So there is at least one alternative for each letter and three or four variants for the majority of them, giving the user lots of options for combining letters in a lively and expressive way.
Availability
Sirenia is available on Myfonts since October 17, 2022, for $49 per style and $495 for the whole family. As an introductory offer during the first month, it comes with a 60% discount. For all Adobe Creative Cloud users, it is available through Adobe Fonts at no additional cost.
Felix Braden
The designer of Sirenia lives in Cologne, Germany. He studied communication design at the Trier University of Applied Sciences with Prof. Andreas Hogan and is an alumnus of Jens Gehlhaar’s Gaga Design. He co-founded Glashaus Design, is the art director at MWK Cologne, is responsible for the Corporate Design of the Romano-Germanic Museum and Malteser International, and works as a freelance type designer. In 2000, he founded the independent type foundry Floodfonts and designed numerous free typefaces. His commercial fonts were released by Monotype, Fontwerk, URW++, Volcanotype & Floodfonts and are available via Myfonts, Fontspring, and the Adobe Creative Cloud. His typefaces have been winners of the Communication Arts Typography Annual and were nominated for the German Design Award.
Hard Facts
Foundry: Floodfonts
Designer: Felix Braden
Release: October 18th 2022
Format: OTF, WOFF
Styles: 18, Thin to Black (incl. Italics)
Price per style: 49$ | family: 495$ | Free for all users of the Adobe Creative Cloud
Sirenia is 60% off on Myfonts until December 1st 2022
Buy: https://www.myfonts.com/collections/sirenia-font-floodfonts