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About
Description

Although initially designed as a rational/geometric font, Triplex developed into one of Licko’s most intuitive typeface designs at the time of its release in 1989. Its roots, like many of Licko’s fonts during that period, can be traced back to her bitmap typeface designs which often functioned as the skeletons from which she developed her more expressive designs. Triplex’s origin can be found in the proportions of Lo-Res Twelve, a bitmap screen font, which morphed into Citizen, made of straight line segments, which then led to the design of Triplex.

Triplex was intended as a less rigid and friendlier substitute for Helvetica, and its first extensive use was in Emigre magazine #14, a special issue devoted to Swiss designers.

The name Triplex refers to the three versions that make up the entire family: Triplex, Triplex Serif and Triplex Italic. Each version of the typeface comes in light, bold and extra bold. The italic was designed and drawn by type designer and sign painter John Downer, and was designed to work with both the serif and sans serif versions.

The drawings, for what is now Triplex Italic, were done in Iowa City in 1985 by John Downer. The italic was originally conceived as a companion for another typeface being drawn at the same time called Arcatext, which (like Triplex) could be described as a “humanist sans serif” having simplified character shapes constructed mostly of geometric parts.

At one stage, a certain customer was interested in Arcatext but wanted a different italic drawn for it, so the plan for the italic took another direction and the idea for this one was dropped. Five years later, Emigre decided to commission the abandoned italic as a digital typeface in three weights as companions to the Triplex Sans and Serif families designed by Zuzana Licko in 1989.

The ascenders and descenders have been shortened to match those of Triplex and the new capitals embody more of the features that distinguish the lower case, but otherwise the digital version closely follows the original drawings.

Type Designers

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

Website Publishing

Create a Web Project to add any font from our service to your website

PDFs

Embed fonts in PDFs for viewing and printing

Video and Broadcast

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
Self Hosting: Host web font files on your own server
Custom Services: Request modifications or bespoke fonts directly from the foundry
Volume licensing: Use the fonts across your whole organization
Select font style

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.