Designer and lettering artist Mark Caneso churns out one vibrant, personality-filled typeface after another, so it’s no mystery why he is a regular in our Type Tuesday column. His newest release, Please, is a family of three variable fonts (voices, as Caneso calls them): Please (perfectly proportional and versatile body copy), Please Display (distinctly bold headlines), and Please Poster (look at meeee!).
I’m all in for a good origin story, especially if it details years of archival research sparked by an encounter with a surprising historical specimen. However, Please is a stellar example of type brilliance that doesn’t rest on a graduate-level thesis. Inspiration struck when Caneso was playing around with a GIF of his favorite letter to draw— the lower-case ‘a.’ At heavier weights, he noticed how the double-storey counters began to close in on themselves, and he thought: What if they merged?
Caneso admits that he expects some pushback on his rather unique and potentially disruptive stylistic choices, the single counter included: flexing crossbars (capital ‘a’), and the diagonal ears and serpentine spines on the lower-case ‘g.’ One of our favorite details is the single-shouldered ‘m.’
Each of the three variable fonts features slightly rounded contours. Please and Display share some style notes, while Poster takes things in a decidedly groovy direction. The compressed counters make the letterforms come alive, almost dance, at the heavier weights.
Caneso designed the three fonts to work well together. And rather than burying the stylistic sets in hidden, often not-enabled features, he has made them part of the default character set. Each family also has extended Latin support with 850+ glyphs, covering 200+ languages. The Please family has something for everyone, from practical proportions that can fit in on any project to letterforms that make an arresting visual statement.
It never hurts that Caneso’s specimen graphics are always a joy to behold.
Learn more about Please. Read more about Mark Caneso, the designer, and visit his type studio, PSTL (ps.type).
(The Please family will be available on Adobe Fonts on December 15.)
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