V.H. Belvadi website
As a robust and extremely readable typeface, Martina Plantijn takes the brunt of the text-heavy content on this website. The oldstyle serif typeface can handle leading small caps, drop cap, and all of a reader’s attention as the text flows through the page.
What does a text-heavy website need? Extremely capable typefaces that can carry the burden of design, content, colour, and presentation all at once—and do this while not stealing the limelight.
Klim Type’s Martina Plantijn is an oldstyle serif released in 2023 based on the original Plantin 110 machine cuts. It is set on VHBelvadi.com with Söhne as the secondary typeface, also from Klim Type, which is an extremely flexible and beautifully proportioned grotesque typeface from 2019. Both were designed by Kris Sowersby.
Set against a somewhat simple design language with a minimal colour palette and sparing use of weights and optical sizes, this pair of typefaces ends up carrying a large portion of the design of this website—and they do it with incredible ease and elegance.
Sowersby says of Martina Plantijn, “I’m honouring the original spirit and fortitude of Plantin. Plantin 110 is a beacon of modern typefounding. I wish the rest of its family was as strong, and that it continued into the official phototype and digital versions. But they’re not. So, by “original” I mean the regular, metal roman style: Plantin 110. Martina Plantijn takes it as her guiding principle.”
Long passages of text are set in Martina Plantijn making for easy, effortless reading on all screen sizes while Söhne, for the most part, handles the interface elements. Both typefaces disappear just enough so that they add to the design without overpowering the content, a characteristic that is admirable in any typeface and much more so while being used on a website that is so text-heavy.
The updated design for 2024 makes Martina Plantijn more central to the design.
Set in display sizes for desktop and larger screens, Martina Plantijn stands out boldly and elegantly. Its narrower letterforms compared to older renditions of Plantin 110 make for superior use case on screens.
When set in headline and display sizes too, Martina Plantijn performs elegantly. And the colour of the text in both light and dark modes makes for pleasant reading.
While Martina Plantijn takes on a major portion of the primary content, the interface text and secondary material is set in Söhne which lends itself to a simple palette made of just two colours and two weights.
When used to set long blocks of secondary text, the capabilities of Söhne as a text face come to the fore.
