Skip to main content Search Home Browse all Recommendations Font packs Foundries About
Scanning your file for similar type
Scanning file — please wait
About
Description

These two families of sans-serif text faces were developed purely along formal lines. The goal was to balance the neutrality required for a text face with just enough idiosyncrasies to create a slightly unfamiliar design in order to provide new interest.

Of course, both of these extremes are necessary, but seldom is either extreme desirable. If everything was neutral, we wouldn’t be able to tell things apart due to their sameness. Alternately, if everything was purely expressive, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the visual world around us.

The definition of what is neutral (traditional or familiar) versus that which is idiosyncratic (expressive or unusual), is continually changing, as new typeface designs are added. Over time, what may once have seemed unusual becomes familiar through repeated usage. This shifting continually provides new contexts for new designs which in turn alter these definitions yet again, thus completing the cycle.

Tarzana’s design process was one of visual editing by discarding overly familiar ideas, while assimilating new ones without compromising legibility. Often, a particular decision would conjure up more questions than it answered, and changing one character often lead to the reworking of an entire range of related characters, as the various stages and permutations of letterforms shown here illustrate.

The roman (upright) and italic versions were designed simultaneously, with the purpose of cross-pollination. In some instances, roman character designs were developed on the basis of the italics, resulting in such features as the curved arm on the lower case “k,” the asymmetric capital “Y,” and the rounded capital “E,” yielding an informal feel to the entire family.

Type Designer

Emigre

Emigre Fonts is a digital type foundry and publisher of type specimens and artist books based in Berkeley, California. From 1984 until 2005 Emigre published the legendary Emigre magazine, a quarterly publication devoted to visual communication. The Emigre font library features more than 600 original typefaces, including Mrs Eaves, Brothers, Matrix and Filosofia.

Licensing Information
The full Adobe Fonts library is cleared for both personal and commercial use.

As with everything from Adobe Fonts, you can use these fonts for:

Design Projects

Create images or vector artwork, including logos

Website Publishing

Create a Web Project to add any font from our service to your website

PDFs

Embed fonts in PDFs for viewing and printing

Video and Broadcast

Use fonts to create in-house or commercial video content

And more…

Visit the Adobe Fonts Licensing  FAQ for full details

Visit Emigre to purchase additional licensing and services, including:
Mobile Apps: Embed fonts in your app UI
Self Hosting: Host web font files on your own server
Custom Services: Request modifications or bespoke fonts directly from the foundry
Volume licensing: Use the fonts across your whole organization
Select font style

How to Use

You may encounter slight variations in the name of this font, depending on where you use it. Here’s what to look for.

Desktop

In application font menus, this font will display:

{{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.preferred_family_name}} {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.preferred_subfamily_name}}

Web

To use this font on your website, use the following CSS:


font-family: {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.family.css_font_stack.replace('"', '').replace('",', ', ')}};
font-style: italicnormal;
font-weight: {{familyCtrl.selectedVariation.font.web.weight}};
        

Glyph Support & Stylistic Filters

Fonts in the Adobe Fonts library include support for many different languages, OpenType features, and typographic styles.