Yesterday’s clarity.
Tomorrow’s possibilities.
The spirit of 1920s German design, extended for the knowledge we pass forward. A scholarly typeface built on Jost. Form follows function; ideas travel further.
Explore the specimenA few small marks. A much wider vocabulary.
Click into the sample and make it yours.
Two weights, each with a true italic. Built from Jost at weights 400 and 700.
Version 0.1 is a static family. Intermediate weights and variable axes are not part of this release.
ḥ / Latin small letter h with dot belowA diacritic should feel like part of the letter, and the letter like part of the sentence.
Firmament extends Jost’s own shapes. Dots, breves, and macrons share the weight and proportions of the letters around them. Half rings are drawn as open circular strokes; schwa follows the curved construction of Jost’s e.
The illustration uses the actual font outline. New glyphs remain in optical review.
Full Jost already includes macrons and carons. Firmament adds many of the scholarly forms that otherwise turn to a fallback font.
ʾĕlōhīm · šāmayim · ḥayyīm
ṣedeq · ṭôḇ · ḫ · ṛ · ʿ
ʾĕlōhīm · šāmayim · ḥayyīm
ṣedeq · ṭôḇ · ḫ · ṛ · ʿ
The first line uses full upstream Jost with a serif fallback to make missing forms visible. Actual fallback varies by device.
Search a character, its Unicode number, or its name. Select any tile to inspect it.
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584 Unicode mappings per style. Spaces and invisible control characters are omitted from the grid. Combining marks appear with a dotted circle for visibility.
The shape
of tomorrow.
Display character, with room for a long thought.
Every generation inherits a world of words. Some arrive in books, others on screens; some survive only because someone took the trouble to copy them. Their next reader deserves the same care.
For Firmament, the best way to carry knowledge forward begins with form following function: letters that remain clear, distinctions that remain visible, and tools that others can use and improve.
We imagine a society in which knowledge is easier to share, study, and question. Its typography should invite participation. A page can be precise and welcoming at once.
A dot below a consonant or a line above a vowel has work to do. In ḥayyīm, šāmayim, and ʾĕlōhīm, those marks carry distinctions into another alphabet. Giving them a coherent form is a small, practical contribution to that future.
Read. Keep the rhythm of a sentence intact, including the unfamiliar letters that give it meaning.
Share. Make the typeface available under an open license, with its source and the means to build it.
Continue. Leave the next generation something it can inspect, adapt, and improve. A living inheritance needs room to grow.
Selected reading proofs, rather than a claim of complete language coverage.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Zwölf große Bücher erzählen von fernen Ländern.
À travers les siècles, les idées voyagent.
La curiosidad abre un diálogo entre épocas.
Příliš žluťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy.
Слова соединяют времена и культуры.
ā ē ī ō ū · š ś · ḥ ṣ ṭ ḫ · ṛ ṝ ḷ · ʾ ʿ
0123456789
€ £ $ ¥ ¢
+ − × ÷ = %
“A thought,” she said.
(And another.)
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ÀÁÂÃÄÅ Æ Ç ÈÉÊË ÌÍÎÏ Ñ ÒÓÔÕÖ Ø ÙÚÛÜ Ý
àáâãäå æ ç èéêë ìíîï ñ òóôõö ø ùúûü ý ÿ ß œ
АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ · абвгдеёжзийклмнопрстуфхцчшщъыьэюя
Firmament carries the spirit of German modernism into a typeface for shared knowledge.
In 1920s Germany, artists and designers reconsidered how everyday things could serve a changing society. The page became a place to experiment with order, economy, and new ways of seeing.
Our typographic starting point is Jost, Owen Earl’s contemporary response to the spirit of Futura. Firmament extends that work with scholarly characters. Its wider design outlook draws on three distinct currents of the period.
At the Bauhaus, the printing and advertising workshop brought experimental typography into practical communication. Established in Dessau in 1925, it treated the printed page as something to design for use.
The Bauhaus workshop ↗The New Typography made asymmetry, sans serif type, and the organisation of information central to a new graphic language. Jan Tschichold’s 1928 book helped articulate this international movement. We inherit its concern for a page’s purpose.
The New Typography at MoMA ↗New Objectivity brought a sober, often critical attention to the realities of Weimar life. For Firmament, that suggests a discipline: look closely, preserve distinctions, and let the subject remain visible. This is our interpretation of its relevance to type.
New Objectivity at MoMA ↗The maxim predates the Bauhaus: Louis Sullivan formulated it in 1896. Here, its function is the transmission of knowledge.
Our revival looks toward a society that makes knowledge available to everyone willing to learn. For us, the best way to pass it from one generation to the next is to design around that purpose: make it legible, keep its distinctions intact, and leave its tools open to improvement.
That purpose gives even the smallest mark a reason to exist. A macron carries a sound; a dot below a letter preserves a distinction. Beauty grows from how well these forms work together.
Firmament began among the essays and etymologies of Wheel of Heaven, where old words meet questions about humanity’s future. We like to keep our feet on the baseline and our eyes on the stars. The next turn of the wheel deserves something worth reading.
Latin and Cyrillic coverage from full Jost, additional scholarly Latin forms, half-ring letters, schwa, and four combining marks below. Precomposed additions and their canonical decompositions are checked with HarfBuzz.
Broader IPA and modifier coverage, Egyptological letters, additional orthographies including Vietnamese, general accent stacking, and variable-font output. Optical placement and kerning of new characters remain open to review.
Yes. Our proposed direction is a coordinated family: a Greek extension, dedicated Hebrew and Arabic companions, and specialist cuneiform and CJK fonts. Each script needs its own letterforms and reading conventions. Version 0.1 remains a Latin/Cyrillic release; these additions are under evaluation.
Read the script study ↗Yes. The Open Font License permits use, embedding, modification, and redistribution subject to its terms. Include the copyright and license when redistributing the font. The font cannot be sold on its own.
Open an issue or a pull request in the font repository. Include the Unicode character, a sample word, the font style, and the size where you noticed the problem. The corpus audit provides a starting list of missing forms.
Explore the source ↗Four styles. Desktop and web fonts.
The full family, under an open license.
Version 0.1 · TTF + WOFF2 + OFL license