Monstrously beautiful font

We’re all familiar with the parable of the ugly duckling; spurned by its peers for being too ugly, it is miserable throughout the winter, only to discover in the following spring that it is in fact a swan.

The moral of the story being that it’s what’s on the inside that counts; or perhaps that you shouldn’t spurn nerds because they’ll go on to make billions in social networking; or perhaps if you stare at anything long enough it starts to look appealing.

I’ve found this to be true of Typotheque’s Karloff Negative. Initially I found it deeply deeply ugly, but the more I look at it, the more it appeals.

The Karloff family has been developed to explore the relationship between beauty and ugliness. It includes Karloff Positive, a beautifully rendered didot font; Karloff Negative, identical to Karloff Positive except that the thick-thin relationship of the glyphs has been inverted; and Karloff Neutral, an on-the-fence slab-serif.

Karloff Positive, like all didone fonts, is ideal for fashion, beauty and aspirational designs.

Modern and regular it includes some elegant details, the ball serif on the lowercase ​‘c’ and the terminal on the lowercase ​‘t’ are particular high points.

Karloff Negative is the same basic design, but with a radical shift; the thick-thin relationships have been inverted so that stems become thin and bars become thick. This creates a jarring, less regular and less legible typeface. The style, which has never been popular, is known as Italian type, and can be found in a lot of early twentieth century American woodblock prints.

Karloff Negative is ideal if you’re looking for a memorable typeface full of vintage character; perfect for recreating the UPA style of the 1940s and ​’50s.

Lastly, there’s Karloff Neutral, a simple, modern slab-serif that is surprisingly usable alongside its character-filled siblings.

Karloff Neutral is the ideal font for minimalist design. In fact, if you’re designing a site for a photographer, you absolutely must shortlist Karloff Neutral for the branding. It’s clean, legible at various sizes and deliciously simple.

Typotheque offer a web-only license for their Webfont service meaning you can insert Karloff fonts straight into your CSS. Prices range from €24 for a web-only license for Karloff Neutral, to €100 for a web-only license for Karloff Positive, Karloff Negative and Karloff Neutral (including bolds and italics).

Have you used Typotheque’s web-font service? How did you find it? Do you prefer to stick to ​‘web-safe’ fonts? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail includes Frankenstein image via Shutterstock.