The terrace restaurant A-Frame offers classic picnic dishes for lunch or as an evening snack.

In the 300-strong community of Rocheport on the banks of the Missouri lies the Les Bourgeois Winery. It is the third largest winery in Missouri, USA and was one of the first clients of the Hoot Design Company, which is located in neighbouring Columbia.

The winery has a distillery, bistro, restaurant and accommodation, which were all brought together under the new umbrella brand The Blufftop at Rocheport with the help of Hoot in early 2022.

Some of the brands were already established, while others were new with the relaunch. “To ensure that The Blufftop at Rocheport and its nine sub-brands are cohesive, we created ten visual identities that work seamlessly together. With a broad color palette inspired by Missouri’s natural landscape, custom illustrations and a variety of different type families, we developed a visual system that is both distinctive and consistent,” said the founder of Hoot, Kristen Brown. One of the type families that they used is Fontwerk’s West, which Brown considered to be “the perfect complement to our sweeping wordmarks” and according to her, “formed the basis on which we could unite the nine brands under one roof.”

The emotional backbone of the Blufftop brand is formed by the calligraphic Esmeralda from Sudtipos and the graceful serif Sometimes Times from BoulevardLAB; the modernist Alternate forms of Korolev from Device is used as the headline typeface, and Victoria Rushton’s Gautreaux serves for the occasional article or preposition. Together, the font quintet defines a heterogeneous brand family that is both easily accessible and appealing.

Rocheport Distilling Co. Whiskey set in West and Esmeralda

The floral leitmotif of the brand family defines the calligraphic typeface, Esmeralda by Sudtipos and the captions are set in Korolev Alternate.

Nine brands under one roof with Fontwerk’s geometric sans West as a unifying element

On the website, West functions as the main font for navigation, headlines and in the body text.

The Blufftop at Rocheport’s property map makes full use of the font quartet.

Esmeralda and Korolev on coasters

Sometimes Times, Esmeralda and West used for a wine label

A towel featuring Sudtipos’ Esmeralda

Esmeralda (Sudtipos, 2013) was chosen for the jacket typography of Disability and the Tudors. The monumental typeface by Guille Vizzari is used in all caps, with its Discretionary Ligatures feature activated. This triggers unconventional capital ligatures like ND, but also nested glyphs for LI, TH, or DO. The uncial E in “All the Kings’ Fools” is offered as a stylistic alternate, or via Stylistic Set 02. The author’s name combines nested glyphs with some swash forms.

The book was written by Philippa Vincent-Connolly and published by Pen & Sword History:

Throughout history, how society treated its disabled and infirm can tell us a great deal about the period. Challenged with any impairment, disease or frailty was often a matter of life and death before the advent of modern medicine, so how did a society support the disabled amongst them?