During visits to the village, I was always drawn to the quirks of these characters. After taking photos and sketches of examples around the town, I created a digital display typeface inspired by them.
A typeface inspired by Welsh cottages
The village of Llandudoch is in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Many of the terrace cottages on the high street and around the market square have their house name rendered in stone in the same style of lettering.
Llandudoch typeface example
An example of a house nameVillage of characters
A key part of the appeal for me was the slight awkwardness of the letters. Block letters with a decorative diamond flourish on the crossbar of the A; elegant, fluted strokes contrasting with blunt, beveled corners.From the small pool of letters used in the house names, I extrapolated the remaining characters to make a full alphabet – including numerals and punctuation – while remaining true to the essence of the original.
Creating the Ll ligatureLl is for ligature
One of the custom characters I knew I wanted to create when starting this project was a ligature for double L. Ll is considered its own letter in the Welsh alphabet, and its sound is one of the defining features of how the language sounds.Using OpenType features, the ligature glyph is automatically inserted when typing a double L.
Overview of the typeface
The typeface in development
