Costa PTF

The Costa ptf typeface family began life in 1999 as a corporate typeface for Costa Crociere, an Italian cruise company who still use it for many of their communication needs. The objective was to develop a typeface that allowed all of the material to be easily recognisable despite various stylesheets and layouts. The style of typeface came from the ligatured logotype Costa designed by Landor Associates in 1999. The immediate answer was to design disconnected letters and to add some unusual glyphs such as k, v or E in order to give a unique colour to the text. The idea was to create a sort of mediterranean style of typeface. Using the structure of a somewhat modernised Italian Chancery script to which only the ending serif remained. The serif being more of a flourish creating contrast and referencing the more exotic countries such as those which Costa Crociere present in their catalogs. Costa ptf is a style without neutrality and doesn’t fit comfortably into any typeface classification – this proves to be the novelty of its design as well as guaranteeing its originality.

Costa ptf was designed to be appropriate for any use where you might desire to give an informal look in titling sizes but still need good legibility in small text sizes.

In 2004, it was time to upgrade the family, originally developed in Postcript Type 1 and TrueType format, into a contemporary OpenType family. First we added ExtraBold and Demi weights and then a large character set with close to full Latin script support. Among various glyphs designed (781 glyphs per weight) we have: Small Caps, 4 styles of figures, many ligatures, ornaments, alternates, superiors & fractions. All glyphs provided in each weight allowing for consistant change from one weight to another.

The Ch ligature
Originally not planned, it appeared because of a trip to Barcelona in June 2004 where I had given a lecture on my work. I wanted to pay an homage to that invitation doing something special. So, during my flight, I designed some variations of the Spanish Ch following ideas developed by the Argentinian type designer Rubén Fontana for his typeface called Fontana ND (published by the Barcelona foundry Bauer). Then, during my lecture, I presented my variations and asked to the audience which design fit the best their language, they selected the design you find in the fonts today.

Check the only non Costa Crociere use of that family.

OpenType

OpenType support page.
—Ptf OpenType glyph set
—OpenType features
—Small Caps,
—Case forms
—Ligatures
—Special ligatures,
—Alternates,
—Stylistic Sets,
—Swashes
—Caps figures,
—Oldstyle figures,
—Tabular Figures,
—Fractions,
—Superscript/Subscript, Superior/Inferior figures,
—Ordinals/Superior Letters and figures,
—Ornaments.

TDC2 2000 winner!

Our Costa custom font family that we design for the Costa Crociere win an certificate of Excellence in Type Design during the TDC2 2000 competition (24 January 2000).

Character set

2 sides of the Costa PTF specimen designed by Tiffany Wardle, 2004.