Kostic Serif is a classic transitional typeface (like Baskerville, Bookman, Caslon, Times) with tall, clean characters and a large glyph set to support all European languages – Greek and Cyrillic script included. It is excellent for setting multiple pages of text and packed with OpenType features (proportional lining and oldstyle numbers, tabular figures, superscript and subscript, numerator and denominator figures, fractions and 31 ligatures in 659 characters), and it should be able to meet the demands of even the most demanding typographic works. Kostic Serif is made with a fairly large x-height, so the text is legible in very small sizes.
Zoran began working on Kostic Serif around 2002 and after completing Regular, Bold and matching italics, he wasn’t too pleased with the design, so he dropped further work on it to make other fonts. In 2010 Nikola came upon the unfinished files for Kostic Serif and decided to redesign the letters, while retaining the basic proportions and widths that Zoran established previously. When they were both pleased with the new look of the font, they made Medium and decided to add the CE and the Greek script to the glyph set, so as to make it pan-European.
Designed by Zoran & Nikola Kostić.
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.
Kostic Serif contains 8 discretionary ligatures which can be turned on through the OT feature. Aside from traditional ct and st ligatures, there are also smooth connections between gi, gt, gv, gy, sp and sty.
There is a set of 23 standard ligatures in each of the 6 fonts, which are turned on automatically in the OT-supported programs.
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.
Tabular numbers line up throughout the weights and both styles, 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.