Ricardo’s designs were the most helpful: the sometimes ‘over decorated’ swirls from his ex libris designs were triggers to me, and I started making Erotica a little more decorative for that purpose,” he says. “When I was looking for some designers who did similar stuff, I found Tony’s work and I was delighted. Sproviero especially cites Rousselot-who was born in Argentina in 1936-as an inspiration. Erotica owes a deep debt to several of these men, notably Carnase, Di Spigna and Rousselot. Among them are Tom Carnase, his protégé Tony Di Spigna and Ed Benguiat, all of them former Lubalin associates Ricardo Rousselot in Spain, Jean Larcher in France, and Peter Horridge in England. There are a handful of masters of the genre working today, nearly all of them veterans of the phototype era when Herb Lubalin made it popular. Spencerian scripts are difficult to do well. With Bird Scripts he succeeded.Įrotica, a Spencerian ScriptBut neither of these scripts prepared me for seeing Erotica, a Spencerian script. Of this education he says, “I realized that if I became a really good calligrapher, I would then be a really good type designer.” He was amazed at the way these calligraphers used tools and he became eager to capture their “brilliant strokes and curves” in the computer. Encouraged by Leuschke to attend calligraphy workshops in the United States, he studied with Julian Waters, Carl Rohrs, Yves Leterme, Denis Brown and the late Georgia Deaver-all masters of contemporary script calligraphy. Sproviero’s sudden growth spurt can be traced to advice he received from Rob Leuschke, one of the leading designers of contemporary script fonts. Inspired by the calligraphic work of Yves Leterme, it’s astonishing in its lightness and grace. Live is an elegant brush script that still has a few awkward characters but is blessedly free of useless swashes. Suddenly in 2013 Sproviero’s type designs took a tremendous leap in quality with the release of Live and Bird Script. Despite the swashes they are not true scripts, though their extreme thick-and-thin features proved to be a stepping-stone for Sproviero on his path to Erotica. These fonts, all of them “didones” at heart, are vastly improved, though some characters are wince-inducing, sprouting over-the-top swashes in the currently popular manner. But, beginning with Parfait (2009–2010) and continuing with Breathe (2010) and Reina (2011), Sproviero began to show some maturation. They’re all the work of a neophyte, someone self-taught both at calligraphy and at font-making. Valeria Script (2008), Kalligrand (2008), Intima Script (2008), Oh Lara (2008–2009), Quijote Savage (2008–2009), and Mon Amour Script (2009) are all broad-pen influenced calligraphic scripts marked by clumsy letterforms and excessive swashes. Sproviero’s earlier script types were, to be polite about it, unimpressive. This is surprising, given his previous track record. Maximiliano Sproviero, Erotica Designer Sproviero is poised to challenge Alejandro Paul as the reigning king of scripts.

The font family has already won an award from the Type Directors Club, which is where I encountered it-and him-earlier this year. Maximiliano Sproviero, a young Argentinean in his mid-20s, has done just that with the perfectly named Erotica from Lián Types. Ever since OpenType sparked an explosion in script typefaces, I’ve been waiting for someone to design a credible Spencerian script style font.

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