When living and working in Gent, Belgium, my partner Catherine Dal and I ran a tiny studio called Dorp & Dal (Village & Valley). Having started out as an art gallery, the studio remained firmly with one leg in the cultural realm, making brochures, books and leaflets for theater and art events, a gallery, and the Arts Department of the City of Gent (English spelling: Ghent).

Around the turn of the century we did about five issues of the Arts Department’s yearly newspaper and listings. On a visit to Prague during that time we had discovered the work by Czech type designer and virtuoso wood engraver František Štorm of Storm Type Foundry, and loved it. Štorm is a type history buff, but also displays a very personal view on letterforms. He produces work that is thorough, yet baroque and often theatrical.

The leading face on the 2000–2001 front page is Štorm’s slab-serif Farao, a whimsical variation on the theme of modern face-meets-Scotch-Roman. The supporting role went to Serapion, probably his wackiest and most personal variation on the Renaissance oldstyle. Text face is Ole Schäfer’s FF Fago.

We Made This created this brochure series for The Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity looking after sites in London like The Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Banqueting House, and Kensington Palace. The charity’s identity typeface, Farao, lends itself beautifully for lavish illustrative applications. The quirky Egyptienne, designed by František Štorm in 2000, is a joyful typeface with a high stroke contrast between curved joints and heavy serifs, which appear almost darker than the stems. Inspired by historic, sometimes imperfect typefaces of the early 19th century Štorm distilled and exaggerated their perculiarities in a playful way. This results in varied, irregular letter shapes which let us imagine legends, scandals, and princesses with ease all by ourselves.

Because of it’s strong flavor Farao is rather easy to combine with other typefaces by focusing on contrast. In this case, the unpretentious Gotham is a nice complement. But it works well with nearly all grotesques (such as Franklin Gothic, Akzidenz Grotesk, Avenir, Neuzeit) and seriffed text faces.