Bery Script.

Glyphs

Bery Script Design Information

TYPE BY Bery Script, designed by Fred Smeijers, is based on the stencil letters of Jean Gabriel Bery. Bery Script is part of the Stencil Fonts Series and was released in 2012.

Jean Gabriel Bery was a Paris stencil maker whose atelier was located on the Pont Notre-Dame. His work is mainly known from the stencil set he supplied to Benjamin Franklin in 1781, now at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Bery’s confident sense of design and the excellent production of his stencils rank him among the best stencil makers of any period.

Bery’s script letters capture the delightful play of strokes, curls and swashes that exemplify the French batârde coulée, a calligraphic hand for dignified correspondence that engravers must have found a joy to cut. But to translate the batârde coulée into stencils, and then into type – by breaking its strokes and regimenting its shapes – would seem to work against the very qualities that give it such life.

Yet Bery, and in turn Smeijers, have succeeded beautifully. The breaks of the stencil idiom, rather than disturbing the strokes, give them a happy syncopation. The rigours of the typographic medium are expertly judged across the set of glyphs, balancing exuberance with discipline. The glyph set itself is much extended from Bery’s original set of stencils and is full of new invention, including the introduction of lowercase linking strokes that add a rhythmic counterpoint to the main pattern of strokes in text settings.

Bery Script is partnered with Bery Roman, a duo of studied contrasts. Together they capture many of the finest features of stencil letters in the French tradition, and make an evocative contribution to the Stencil Fonts Series.

Bery Script fonts are available in OTF CFF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats. Legacy font formats are available on request.

The Stencil Fonts Series was launched on April 19 2012 to accompany the exhibition 'Between Writing & Type: the Stencil Letter' held at Catapult Gallery, Antwerp. Curated by Eric Kindel and Fred Smeijers, the exhibition showcased the history and development of the stencil letter and displayed a selection of historical and contemporary artifacts and their applications.

Supported Languages

  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Asu
  • Basque
  • Bemba
  • Bena
  • Breton
  • Catalan
  • Chiga
  • Colognian
  • Cornish
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Embu
  • English
  • Esperanto
  • Estonian
  • Faroese
  • Filipino
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Friulian
  • Galician
  • Ganda
  • German
  • Gusii
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Inari
  • Sami
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Jola-Fonyi
  • Kabuverdianu
  • Kalenjin
  • Kamba
  • Kikuyu
  • Kinyarwanda
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Lower
  • Sorbian
  • Luo
  • Luxembourgish
  • Luyia
  • Machame
  • Makhuwa-Meetto
  • Makonde
  • Malagasy
  • Maltese
  • Manx
  • Meru
  • Morisyen
  • North
  • Ndebele
  • Northern
  • Sami
  • Norwegian
  • Bokmal
  • Norwegian
  • Nynorsk
  • Nyankole
  • Oromo
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Quechua
  • Romanian
  • Romansh
  • Rombo
  • Rundi
  • Rwa
  • Samburu
  • Sango
  • Sangu
  • Scottish
  • Gaelic
  • Sena
  • Serbian
  • Shambala
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  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Soga
  • Somali
  • Spanish
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Swiss
  • German
  • Taita
  • Teso
  • Turkish
  • Upper
  • Sorbian
  • Uzbek
  • Volapuk
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  • Walser
  • Welsh
  • Western
  • Frisian
  • Zulu