21/12/2023
The goal of this experiment was to design a multi-purpose typeface based on early Cyrillic graphics. The glyph forms are cleared of contrast, decorative elements and stylistic features of any specific age, or writer. They are as close to skeleton as possible to make the typeface contemporary, fairly neutral, yet definitely early-Cyrillic (pre-Westernisation) style.
The typeface was named after Viktor Zhivov — philologist, professor at the Russian Language Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and at the Department of Slavic and Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley — with whom Yury Ostromentsky was lucky to meet and talk about the Old Slavic script, but also the lack of a versatile working tool for researchers specialized in the Slavic languages and literature. That is how the idea of this project was conceived. We hope that we were able to design a typeface which will help scientists, a quite capable tool that will both preserve the glyph forms and work beyond any specific style, be relevant both in a book about the Ostromir Gospels and in a book on birch bark manuscripts.
To honour the memory of professor Zhivov, we are willing to give this typeface away for free to scholars and students who study Slavic languages and literature in any country and any language. The rest of you can purchase the Zhivov typeface on Future Fonts
By the way, more styles are in progress.
Pictures 2, 3 and 5-10 by Тимур Зима
