Agmena, a new book type from Jovica Veljović

Lately it seems that every new typeface release is either a sans serif or a script. What has become of the stalwart, straightforward – or even quirky and delightfully fancy – serif typeface? Happily, the serif's back in town.

Take a look at Jovica Veljović's Agmena™ typeface family. The design – first announced a little over a year ago – quickly became a "New Best Seller" on Fonts.com. It's now risen to become the first traditional serif typeface on the "All Best Sellers" list – albeit below a bevy of sans serif and a couple of slab serif families. The Agmena collection also won recognition in the Type Directors Club Typography Competition in 2013 as well.

Veljović based Agmena's design on calligraphic letterforms, his primary intention being the setting of long – and beautiful – blocks of text copy. (Old timers might refer to Agmena as a "book face.") To this end, Agmena is available in four weights: book, regular, semibold and bold, each with a complementary italic. The book and regular weights provide an optical balance between various point sizes – with the more robust regular being well suited for small sizes­. Designers can also choose the best weight for different paper stocks. The regular holds up remarkably well when printed on paper with a bit of "tooth," while the book is ideal for smooth "calendered" stock.)

Agmena's extensive character set makes setting refined text copy a pleasure. Each weight of the family offers small caps, old style and lining figures, a throng of ligatures, swash characters and even a suite of dingbats. Not stopping there, Veljović also designed Cyrillic and Greek versions of the Agmena alphabet.

While designed for publications, Agmena has also been welcomed into advertising, branding, and even online environments.

The complete Agmena family is available as desktop fonts from the Fonts.com and Linotype.com websites. It is also available as Web fonts.

Click here to learn more about – and to license – the Agmena family.

Allan Haley is Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging. Here he is responsible for strategic planning and creative implementation of just about everything related to typeface designs.