Gallery: New Font ‘Chronicle Hairline’ Is for Men Who Wear Dress Shoes Without Socks
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Acclaimed typographer Jonathan Hoefler has just put a new font on sale. It's called Chronicle Hairline, and it's got some interesting ties to the fashion industry.
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The original Chronicle is a descendent of Didot, the reigning typeface for fashion magazines. If you’ve ever read *Vogue*, *Harper’s Bazaar*, or *Elle*, or watched the opening credits of *The Devil Wears Prada*, you’ve seen Didot.
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Hoefler updated Didot for *Harper’s Bazaar* in 1991, and created Chronicle in 2002 as a newsier alternative.
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*Porter*, the magazine from Net-a-Porter, commissioned this latest version of Chronicle. “A name like *Porter* is intriguing enough that it could be anything,” Hoefler says. “The title needed to immediately signal fashion, but the creative team wanted it to be different from *Vogue* and *Bazaar*.”
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Chronicle Hairline does that, Hoefler says, because its letters take on more organic shapes than those of Didot. Didot follows a rigid set of rules. The stems and diagonals on most letters are slab-thick or hairline-thin. Those elements connect to a serif at sharp angles. Chronicle features softer, rounder joints.
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Chronicle Hairline conveys high fashion. But as fashion changes, so too must the designs around it. Blogging, the web, and even athleisure have democratized the fashion industry. The new typeface reflects that.
