Gaslon is a slight reinterpretation and major expansion of a 1973 film type called Corvina Black, originally designed for VGC by A. Bihari. While the original typeface was popular in its own right, there were some things in it that were too quirky to work in the display applications it was intended for. Some of the letter combinations just didn’t work to their visual optimum. For example the a and o were too similar, ditto the C and G, the E, F and J were too overwhelming to be set properly within certain display uses.

Gaslon eliminates these problems by the inclusion of plenty of alternates for the vast majority of the original letters. In fact, the original a is itself now an alternate to a gorgeous new one. The Gaslon Alt font includes tremendous possibilities for both unicase use, and proper use in conjunction with the main font. This is our true homage to a typeface that had great potential more than three decades ago, but was overlooked by digitizers because of a few quirks it had in film type contexts.

Full of curves and invitation, Gaslon ranks very high among the friendliest poster faces ever made. It is ideal for friendly store signs, children book covers, and plenty of other applications. In fact, if you’re planning on contributing to a few protests around your neighborhood or city, you would probably be better off using Gaslon to help your sign/placard carry words and slogans that are big but friendly. Nothing beats “DOWN WITH GAS PRICES” set in a nice imaginative mix of the many Gaslon letters.

The OpenType version of Gaslon is a single font that contains all the alternates and niceties programmed within features accessible by OT-friendly programs.