Altivo is a proper workhorse sans serif. Sixteen OpenType fonts in eight weights (with true Italics) range from Thin to Ultra. Meticulous care was taken to ensure high legibility in text sizes on the screen. The typeface is designed to have wide proportions, generous x-height, loose spacing, ink traps, large apertures and low stroke contrast. Altivo’s ink traps are not only a functional design feature, they also look interesting and lend character to the typeface in headlines.
True Italics, small caps and multiple sets of figures, as well as a complete set of lowercase superscript were all included in the family to accommodate high typographic standards. If you need to pair it with a serif font, you can’t go wrong with Chiavettieri, since both typefaces were made with the same basic proportions, and their tabular figures are the same width.
Of all the things in this world that man has invented, nothing can compare to the alphabet. To be able to send to a friend or acquaintance, far away somewhere in the wide world, one’s thoughts on a piece of paper: to be able to read what others wrote two thousand years ago and to be able to write something that others will be able to read several thousand years later; that is a science almost transcending the bounds of the human mind, and one can say that whoever first invented it, was more God than man. The alphabet has opened the road to the human mind, enabling it to approach God to the limits of its possibilities. It was invented some four thousand years ago, and after its difficult and strange development it has become so easy that today there is no easier skill, and has spread so much in the world that at present in Europe there are peoples among whom there is no one who cannot read and write.
Tabular numbers line up throughout the weights and both styles – even in Black, which is perfect for columns of data in financial reports. This also works with oldstyle figures.
Each weight includes a set of ready-made fractions accessible via the OpenType feature. There is also a full set of numerators and denominators for creating custom fractions.
A set of superior/inferior figures for footnotes and scientific formulae is also included.
There is a set of 16 standard ligatures in each of the 16 styles, which are turned on automatically in OT supported programs, plus 2 traditional discretionary ligatures: ct and st.
Oldstyle figures are included in the set. We like to use them because they do not disturb the visual flow of a long text like lining figures do.
A complete set of superior lowercase (Latin) was created for Altivo, so that abbreviations and ordinals can assume their proper form.