Hermann is one of our most readable typefaces to date. Since last year, the W Design team had been carefully exploring the possibility of developing a text font. So, we delved into concepts found in some of our favorite novels, such as *Steppenwolf* and *Brave New World*, written by Hermann Hesse and Aldous Huxley, respectively. Ideas such as duality, surrealism, and freedom emerged most prominently.
With these concepts in mind, we carefully analyzed the typefaces used in the works of Hesse and Huxley; Sabon and Garamond caught our attention and, of course, earned our admiration. Consequently, the challenge was to combine the key characteristics of these typefaces with the concepts we had already identified.
At first, we created a text font suitable for setting long passages. However, we realized that we needed to refine certain characteristics to convey all the ideas. A complete set of discretionary ligatures was designed for uppercase letters, which transforms Hermann into a display typeface when needed. Swashes (from A to Z) and terminal forms (for the letters h, k, m, n, r, and x in roman, and for the letters a, d, e, h, i, l, m, n, r, t, u, x, and z in italics), adding more dynamism and versatility to the visual composition.
Hermann was designed not only to be precise in terms of legibility, but also bold and daring. That’s why we took a big leap and created, from the very beginning, a typeface inspired by the world of 20th-century novels, using the name of one of its greatest exponents, Hermann Hesse.