Hoefler & Frere-Jones

A dark sans serif from Britain’s industrial age.

Leviathan is the gothic (sans serif) member of The Proteus Project, a collection of four interchangeable type families designed in different nineteenth century styles.

Leviathan began as a sans serif conversion of our Ziggurat typeface, a process which echoes the way in which many early gothics were developed. Like all typographic names that evoke the ancient world (Egyptian, Tuscan, Ionic, etc.) the term “gothic” is a ninteenth century English invention that reminds us of that culture’s fascination with antiquity.