Eksja is a modern slab serif available in four weights, each with a corresponding italic. All the fonts in the family have small caps, the extended latin character set, diacritical f-ligatures, enclosed numerals (numbers in circles) and case-sensitive punctuation.
The general design of the typeface has been with a strong human touch in mind. The ends of the serifs have been given a subtle rounding, just enough to take the edge off which, when coupled with the largely humanist structure of the design, creates an open, friendly and approachable design, abandoning the usual geometric severity commonly associated with slab serif typefaces.
Eksja contains quite a comprehensive numerals system. Obviously, each font has the standard proportionally and tabularly spaced lining and old-style figures but, crucially, the tabular numerals share the exact same width in each font variant. That means that you can choose to use the thin, regular, bold, black and their italic forms all in the same setting and they will always line up.
In addition to the ‘normal’ numerals there are super-script and sub-script numerals and OpenType fractions that can be automatically composed as you type. There are also the enclosed numerals, numbers inside a circle, that are useful for numerically listing items and, thanks to the wizardry of OpenType, they can contain any number of digits (typically, enclosed numerals are precomposed single digits, only encompassing the 0–9 range, the enclosed numerals in Eksja can go to double digits, triple digits or, in fact, any number of digits*).
*The automation of the enclosed numerals is accessed via either ‘Stylistic Set #1’ or ‘Stylistic Alternates’ which requires the use of an application that supports OpenType stylistic sets or stylistic alternates, such as Adobe’s InDesign or Photoshop. It should, however, be noted that enclosed numerals can be manually created in any application that has a character palette.
Released: 30 October 2009