Monotalic was created as a fun experiment, exploring better solutions for the monospaced type design.

Most monospaced (fixed-width) typefaces have the same main design problem regarding the lowercase – filling the empty space around l, f, i, j and r. That usually brings the addition of slab serifs to those narrow characters, causing many monospaced fonts to look and feel alike. Monotalic solves that problem by adopting the handwritten (or cursive) form for those problematic characters, which allows them to be defined in more strokes, thus getting a better distribution of form in that fixed-width space. On the other hand, cursive writing usually lacks the legibility of a Roman (Regular upright) style, so Monotalic was created to be a hybrid, taking the best of both worlds.

Monospaced fonts today are mostly used for coding. Modern code editors use colored text in order to differentiate between different kinds of code. So, in that environment there’s actually no need for traditional text styling by adding Italics, Bold or other styles, because the code lines are overstated as it is. That is why Monotalic focuses on one style only, in three widths and four weights. The weights allow users to choose the perfect contrast of text on screen, depending on their monitor resolution and background color in the editor.

Movie scripts are almost exclusively set in 12pt Courier. It became the industry standard because when set in the specific “screenplay format” it helps with the breakdown of the schedule and budgeting process of the film production. Although it looks completely different, text set in Monotalic (Normal width) will take the same amount of space as Courier.