Why stop at sans? Rather than leave FS Silas Sans as an only child, the team wanted to extend the family, and create a complete system for brands and editorial. Unsure what the result would be, the team started experimenting with a slab serif version. ‘We didn’t know how it would turn out, but we really liked it and wanted to take it further.
‘We stuck with the angular theme of the sans by drawing angled slab serifs,’ says Phil Garnham, ‘as opposed to the square serifs that slab fonts usually have. That created an inner dynamism in words and sentences on the page, and a very distinctive, crafted character, like a Victorian soul in a contemporary body.’
These crafted touches include details such as the angled ascenders on the ‘i’ and ‘l’, while characters such as the ‘y’, with its abruptly-ending descender, add a mark of distinction.
Silas Slab, like its sibling, offers a clear-cut range of five weights, from the elegant Thin to the monumental ExtraBold. Put it together with Silas Sans and you have the full complement, capable of performing the full range of tasks, above the line and below, in headlines, body copy and logotypes, B2B and B2C. Keep them together; they don’t like it when they’re apart.
