Pirouette is based on a logotype that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 - a shampoo container, at that! Already Tateno's original design experimented with overlapping swash italic letterforms. These experiments grew outside out their initial packaging project, taking on a life of their own. Eventually, they developed into the Pirouette typefaces, which were honored with a first place finish in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by Linotype GmbH.
The Pirouette Type family contains six different elements.
Pirouette Text is a beautiful, finely drawn Italic hand, which can set long passages of text.
Pirouette Regular is more formal, with elaborate Swash capitals. The
Pirouette Regular font can also set whole lengths of text on its own, and its letters may be freely interchanged with those from
Pirouette Text. The letters contained in
Pirouette Alternate, Pirouette Separate 1, and
Pirouette Separate 2 do not constitute complete character sets. These additional decorative letters may be further interchanged with those in
Pirouette Text and
Pirouette Regular to create splendidly ornate text. Border letterforms in these artful text creations may be further augmented by the last member of the Pirouette family,
Pirouette Ornaments. .
The original Pirouette family contained six different elements, but now all of these elements have been combined together into one font, with contextual OpenType features! A number of ligatures and ornaments are inside the font as well. Plus, since the new Pirouette is a Linotype Com font, it can set 48 Latin-based languages effortlessly; that¿s almost all of the languages used in Europe!
The Pirouette type family, which represents Tanteno's first commercial font design, is greatly influenced by the calligraphic and typographic work of the master German designer, Prof. Hermann Zapf, especially his recent
Zapfino collection.
