Prefer to listen? The full chapter, narrated — the same words you just read, in Daith.
Narrated by Gary Furlong · 5 min 42 sec
What you’re reading isn’t filler — it’s the argument
Fonts are a process tool, not an end in themselves. This is the fourth Darden Studio release for which we have not made conventional specimens. Instead, we gave Daith a proper job: producing a believable fake product. Usually all we make is the packaging… but for this one a novelist wrote the chapter, an illustrator drew its cover, and an audiobook narrator read it aloud. Daith holds all of it together.
Not His Type
An enemies-to-lovers romance — two designers who agree on nothing, least of all each other.
We want you to actually read this, not just observe the color and quality of the setting in the abstract. So instead of the usual public-domain text, we commissioned something new, contemporary, and fun: we asked one of our favorite romance novelists (really),Erin Dunn, to write an excerpt of a novel. We gave Erin free rein. She changed the title from the obscure pun we had (Ink Trapped) to something more mainstream; we even let her add some very basic type puns and remove our nerdy 8e gag. The excerpt is set end to end in Daith — from the display cut of the opener down to the steady text of the prose. A typeface should be able to carry a voice for pages at a time. The spread above is Daith doing exactly that.
The people behind it
Each of these three was the first person we asked — the first choice we didn’t think would say yes. They are not people we found through research; in each case, we were already fans of their work.
Erin Dunn
Erin Dunn writes contemporary romance with a sharp comic edge and a soft centre. Her debut novel, the award-winning “He’s to Die For,” is a huge hit, and not just because it takes place in our old neighborhood of Brooklyn. It’s the perfect hybrid of romance and police procedural that shouldn’t work but does, just like a Darden Studio typeface.
@murdercutehqIsabella Wade
An illustrator and surface-pattern designer, and the founder of Bee Creates. Bella found us at Adobe Max, and we’re very flattered she has been a supporter of our work. Figures are a rare subject for her — we asked her to step outside her usual subject matter, and she blew us away, bringing Ben and Desmond to life on the warm, character-driven cover.
bee-creates.comGary Furlong
Why would a font release need a narrator? Because modern books are often consumed in audio format, with a person idly reading along. An award-winning narrator with hundreds of titles to his name, Gary is at his best reading a work with multiple accents — which unfortunately this short excerpt doesn’t provide. If you like this, we recommend Jax Calder’s wonderfully implausible “Unlikely Dilemmas” trilogy.
garyfurlongvoiceovers.comDaith
Daith is a digital-first, high-contrast serif built around a continuous optical-size axis. Rather than choosing between separate text and display cuts, you move smoothly through the range — from Small and Caption up through Text, Display, and Big — across eight weights, with true italics throughout. Refined, self-assured, and at home in editorial, culture, fashion, and hospitality. The spread above uses most of that range on a single pair of pages.
Want the rest of the story?
You’ve read one chapter, in one typeface. Daith isn’t out yet — but it’s close. Leave your email and you’ll be first to know when it ships; we’ll send you the rest of Not His Type, set in Daith, the day it does. Nothing else in between.
