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About
Description

Solex is a studious exploration of the industrial sans serif genre. It marks an intersection of ideas that grew from two or three separate periods of development over the past hundred years.

The general source is a class of slightly condensed, rectangular, grotesque types made for newspaper ads and handbills from the turn of the 19th century such as Alternate Gothic (1903), Standard Gothic (1896) and News Gothic (1908).

The specific source of inspiration for Solex is Bauer Topic (aka, Steile Futura) designed in 1950 by Paul Renner, who also designed the larger and more influential Futura series more than 20 years earlier. In Solex, Licko has preserved the lone foot serif introduced by Renner at the base of many italic characters: a, d, h, k, l, m, n, u; and has added others where Renner did not: i, x. Licko has also introduced a head serif on letters where Renner put none: i, l, x. The added head serifs give Solex a trait often associated with monospaced fonts and typewriter faces, and give the i, l, and x two apiece.

Solex also revisits postmodern themes seen in Erik Spiekermann’s digital milestone, Meta Sans, and its cousin, Officina Sans. In both Licko’s and Spiekermann’s designs we find a measure of rigidity, linearity, and noncalligraphic monotone. Indeed, Solex even shows faint signs of going in the direction of Matthew Carter’s series, Bell Centennial, with respect to the narrow (almost trapezoidal) bowls, slimmed interior strokes, and pronounced traps. All the same, Solex has a look of its own in text settings, and it will likely find a place for itself among numerous other condensed grotesques in the years ahead.
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Type Designer

Emigre

Emigre Fonts is a digital type foundry and publisher of type specimens and artist books based in Berkeley, California. From 1984 until 2005 Emigre published the legendary Emigre magazine, a quarterly publication devoted to visual communication. The Emigre font library features more than 600 original typefaces, including Mrs Eaves, Brothers, Matrix and Filosofia.

Licensing Information
The full Adobe Fonts library is cleared for both personal and commercial use.

As with everything from Adobe Fonts, you can use these fonts for:

Design Projects

Create images or vector artwork, including logos

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PDFs

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Use fonts to create in-house or commercial video content

And more…

Visit the Adobe Fonts Licensing  FAQ for full details

Visit Emigre to purchase additional licensing and services, including:
Mobile Apps: Embed fonts in your app UI
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Custom Services: Request modifications or bespoke fonts directly from the foundry
Volume licensing: Use the fonts across your whole organization
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How to Use

You may encounter slight variations in the name of this font, depending on where you use it. Here’s what to look for.

Desktop

In application font menus, this font will display:

{{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.preferred_family_name}} {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.preferred_subfamily_name}}

Web

To use this font on your website, use the following CSS:


font-family: {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.family.css_font_stack.replace('"', '').replace('",', ', ')}};
font-style: italicnormal;
font-weight: {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.font.web.weight}};
        

Glyph Support & Stylistic Filters

Fonts in the Adobe Fonts library include support for many different languages, OpenType features, and typographic styles.