Ligature Valley

Grilli Type's new release, GT Era, nails craft and functionality — but stalls out on cultural impact. This week I score GT Era across originality, craft, functionality, and cultural impact, and dig into why a typeface can be technically excellent and still read as a commercial move rather than a cultural one. Final score: 75/100. Free audio here — subscribe for the full video walkthrough at ligatu...

Pangram Pangram's PP Kyoto set out to bridge Latin slab serifs with the calligraphic spirit of hiragana and katakana — nine weights, full bilingual character support, and a genuinely unusual bet for a type foundry. This week I score Kyoto across originality, craft, functionality, and cultural impact, and make the case for why its niche cultural upside might matter more than its shot at mainstream...

Ligature Valley is a long-form type design critique show for designers who want to think deeper than the algorithm. Each episode breaks down new and notable typefaces—retail fonts, brand commissions, and experimental releases—through a structured rubric that scores originality, craft, usability, and cultural impact. Every typeface reviewed gets scored out of 25, across four core categories, which...