Biondi

I introduced Biondi on March 8, 2005, in response to a commission from Roxio Inc. for their DVD authoring software, Toast. As with most of my commissioned work, it was non-exclusive; I released it to the general market as well. The brief called for something in the spirit of Copperplate Gothic but more robust for use in video menus. Copperplate’s hairline serifs, though elegant in print, tended to shimmer or disappear on interlaced displays. To address this, I created wedge-shaped serifs that were thicker than Goudy’s original design but not so heavy that the typeface lost its Copperplate character. The wedge strategy softened horizontal details and reduced interlace dazzle without sacrificing the overall style.

The initial release for Roxio included only Regular and Light, with no italics. I released the same two styles through Typodermic Fonts. On September 11, 2009, I expanded Biondi into a full family of five weights with italics and a modestly larger character set. Like its inspiration, the design used small caps in place of lowercase letters, but I standardized serif placement on numerals and a few other characters where Copperplate had been inconsistent.

I updated Biondi in June 2021 with technical refinements to keep it reliable across applications. In October 2024, with version 3.1, I reorganized the style names for more intuitive menu sorting and web font management—Book was renamed to Light, Light became Extra-Light, and so on. Apart from these changes, the design has remained stable.