I think that, at a certain point in one’s career as a type designer, you come to appreciate the absolute classic and enigmatic power that is Roger Excoffon’s Antique Olive. Eccentric yet sharp, dark and suave, the typeface has a pull that has inspired generations of type designers. Based on the Air France logo that Excoffon designed, Antique Olive was first released in 1958 and completed in 1962. A true juggernaut of the type-design world, Antique Olive has stood the test of time in many regards.
For some reason, Toronto has Antique Olive plastered everywhere. From Jamaican eateries to your dry cleaner to the local convenience store, you can find Antique Olive on pretty much every block in downtown Toronto. My fascination with the typeface grew out of these everyday encounters. I’d see it take on different personalities from one storefront to the next. Of course, going to school for type design also spurred my interest, but is that really a surprise?
Antique Olive served as one of the earliest examples of reverse contrast that I encountered during my studies. I imagine that’s the case for many budding designers. And why wouldn’t it be? The typeface is a classic for a reason: a great example of an impactful reverse-contrast typeface that doesn’t rest its laurels on a fad. Antique Olive is a well-considered humanist design with a vibrancy that makes it distinct from contemporary sans-serif competitors like Helvetica and Univers. Doing away with conformity, its weighted top, squared shoulder stress, and beautiful use of stroke tapering create focal points within each letter, drawing your eyes in and keeping them level at the top.
The why
To be honest, this whole dive into Antique Olive came from a minor misunderstanding in typographic terminology that I just couldn’t get over. My rudimentary grasp of type terminology at the time led me to believe that “antique” was used to describe late-nineteenth-century slab serifs. So I was always a little confused as to why Antique Olive didn’t have slabs. It wasn’t until I dug a little deeper that I found out that the French used the term “antique” to describe sans serifs, while the British used it to describe slabs. A quaint little twist of meaning that just messed me up.
As I was researching the shapes and structures that would come to define Picholine Antique, I also came across FF Balance by Evert Bloemsma, another typeface that would be very influential in the development of Picholine Antique and Antic, its evil twin, so to speak. Designed in 1993, FF Balance incorporated the top-heavy concept but adopted a more utilitarian approach, with open apertures and more even spacing that made the design better suited to text. FF Balance has no straight lines either; this unique parameter created innovative ink traps for the text face. Truly a cool font.
I like dumb puns, and so, as an oh-so-hilarious, very funny, comedic interpretation of design, I decided to create Picholine Antique, which would be Antique Olive with slab serifs. Ah, so good. I’m fucking hilarious. Having recently graduated from Type and Media at the time only amplified my sensitivity to this kind of humour. The design was my interpretation of the energy of Antique Olive, with notes from FF Balance. I was intrigued by their use of the top-heavy line as a driving focus of the design. The face would be text-focused and built around emphasized horizontal moments and chunky, bold slab serifs. These horizontal features would tie the idea together and create an even stronger reading line.
“The unconscious alphabet”
I found this great little blurb about Excoffon’s approach to designing Antique Olive in Paul McNeil’s The Visual History of Type (great book, by the way).
A vision of new typography; Antique Olive was meant to be “'the exact representation of the unconscious alphabet in each of us… the ideal alphabet.'
The phrase about the unconscious alphabet gets me every time. Over the years of designing type, the concept of the “unconscious alphabet” has popped up over and over again. It can feel really abstract, but I feel this alphabet is often at the core of what I deem to be pretty stellar type design. You can think of it as our collective social alphabet, born from our enduring relationship with written language. Every person, from the time they are able to read and write, has their own alphabet, but the core is the same. The “unconscious alphabet” is, at least in my humble opinion, analogous to the basic plots of storytelling or the fundamental rhythms of music. There’s something primal there, and tapping into its power is, in my view, the root of great type design.
Picholine Antique
Picholine Antique was confident and warm, taking specific traits from Antique Olive that made it impactful and dramatic. Its drawn-out proportions and softer curves made it feel much calmer, and the slab serifs grounded it. The design also featured rounded serifs and strong ink traps that would draw light into the counters and spaces between the letters, creating vibrancy and rhythm. The emphasis on the top-heavy line was dialled back, and revisions were made to determine exactly how heavy and contrasting the top line should be.
The name of the font also comes from Antique Olive. The Picholine (pee-shuh-LEEN) is a small French olive. Picholine Antique. Fuck, I’m good.