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LTR Limited Grotesque is a low contrast sans serif design with a cheeky roman and an italic with a rather steep angle. Both share the same joyful mix of shapes.
Limited Grotesque references the lettering of English artist Eric Ravilious (1910-1942).
Perhaps best known for his work as a war artist and his watercolor landscapes, he was a prolific illustrator and engraver.
This typeface started as an exploration of the lettering on one of his engravings: a 1930 trade card for the London gallery Dunbar Hay Ltd. Rather than reproduce existing printing typefaces, he preferred to draw his own shapes.
Roman and Italic, non-variable. Extended Latin character set. Stylistic sets, ligatures, quite a few alternates. Licenses for Desktop, Web, App. No surveillance, no subscription. Pricing starts at €40 per style and €80 for the collection.
LTR
Limited
Grotesque*
China,
Glass
Like the lettering, the typeface balances between the straight and the round.
W1S4HQ
LTR Limited offers a light take on the humanist sans genre. Not to be used for running text, but you already figured this out.
Book
&Page
The incline measures 20 degrees, considerably more than the average italic. But is it this really an italic? Most of the letterforms are slanted, but not cursive.
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LTR Limited Grotesque has an extended latin characterset. Diacritics available for all alternates. The figures have superiors and inferiors.
#456123 · 789123#
Required Ligatures: Or shall we call it flag management? The default f automatically changes to a shorter variant when necessary. In some combinations the horizontal bar will connect.
ffi ffl fi fë ufo, etc.
More Typographic: This selects all the variants that are a bit more typographic. This does not make it an office typeface, but it behaves a bit better. Look for Stylistic Set 1.
traditionally jovial
Rounder This set selects all rounder variants, with the bigger terminals. Look for round shapes on l, l, j and i as well. Look for Stylistic Set 2.
traditionally jovial
Straighter This set selects the straighter variants for j. Look for Stylistic Set 3.
traditionally jovial
Long s This openType feature selects the archaic long shape for the s. Some ligatures provided. Look for Historic variants, or hist.
Altstädter Pilsner
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¶&£
Town
A forked construction for the capital and lowercase W. An unforked lowercase w is available in Stylistic Set 4.
Wren №4
A playful mix of details, references and origins. The long upstroke of the r was useful in the 4.
Club Club
Straighter and rounder variants available as stylistic sets.
Interpreting lettering is fun but also a challenge. Because the original shapes are drawn freely, as part of an illustration, they are not bound by the systems of typography. When re-imagined as type, however, some things have to change. As with all individuals functioning as a group, there are rules and expectations.
Another hurdle is the number of available shapes. The Dunbar piece is only twelve letters long, and two of them are double. Clearly there is a need for interpretion and imagination to extend this into a full alphabet (and an additional 530 glyphs). The result is neither a revival nor a reproduction, but rather a sort of typographic fiction. Also, I did not reproduce any artwork by Ravilious in the font. It has a fish and a teapot, but I drew those.
There are other examples of low contrast, sans serif lettering in Ravilious’ work. While clearly different, these are clues on how the capitals might be drawn. For instance, the 1934 engraving for the BBC shows an A with a sharp top, a nice wavy flag on the R and a gorgeous broad-nib S with sharp terminals.
Dunbar Hay Ltd. c. 1930 Crockery Label. Eric Ravilious des. London. Wood engraved label, printed in black and brown. The companion lettering in the drawing, the high contrast serif with some intriguing script-like connector strokes is being explored.
References for capitals. Pamphlet cover for BBC 1934, from Notes, p.52. 1
The 1946 Faber and Faber publication Notes on the Wood-Engravings of Eric Ravilious2 is a wonderful book with crisp reproductions. The preface by writer and designer Robert Harling3 has some unexpected criticism:
“[Ravilious] could deal with alphabetical characters qua characters in a masterly manner, and he had a deep interest in letter-forms […], but when those alphabetical characters were made words, and those words made titles, this mastery left him and his designs were less happy. He was never able to handle these letter-forms with the certainty that Eric Gill gave to lettering.”
Harling might have a point, but it’s exactly this uncertainty that imbues the characters with character. Ravilious’s lettering is joyful and spontaneous, and has the same energy as the other elements in his artwork. He understood letterforms and their needs very well, and was not drawing typefaces.
1, 2 Notes on the Wood-Engravings of Eric Ravilious. Robert Harling. Faber & Faber, 1946.
3 Robert Harling, (1920-2008) Wikipedia
Roman and Italic, non-variable. Extended Latin character set. Stylistic sets, ligatures, quite a few alternates. Licenses for Desktop, Web, App. No surveillance, no subscription. Pricing starts at €40 per style and €80 for the collection.
Will there be more styles to LTR Limited? Obviously, a nice upright version was added just now. As to even more weights and styles? Possibly.
Disambiguation: CJ Type publishes a typeface named Dunbar. Not related.
Eric Ravilious was an amazing artist and if you’re not familiar with his work, you should look him up on Wikipedia, or perhaps this essay on the Public Domain Review and visit the Ravilious Gallery at the Towner Eastbourne museum in the UK.
Stylistic sets Not all applications provide access to the stylistic sets in OpenType fonts. Design tools like Adobe CC does it well. But Apple Pages or Microsoft Office for instance, do not.
Colophon Minisite for LTR Limited Grotesque version 1.1 March 2024. All rights reserved, LettError Type, 2024. Colophon Minisite for LTR Limited Grotesque version 1.1 March 2024. All rights reserved, LettError Type, 2024.
Notes & Queries*