Toscana is an eclectic wood type characterised by vernacular letterforms. It is a spiky semi-condensed italic sans, with low thick-thin contrast and short descenders but tall ascenders. Its most striking feature is definitely the systematic wedge-like tapering of stems from top to bottom in all glyphs.
Toscana
It was released by Xilografia Meneghello e Belluzzo in six body sizes around 1934 and may have been loosely inspired by Wedge Gothic, an American type cut by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (BB&S) in 1893 for the Chicago Herald.
Courtesy Tipoteca Italiana fondazione
AM Toscana’s designer, Ian Farnam, says: ‘It comes with rationalised weight and proportions. The original x-height was rather small and has been increased to create a more consistent contemporary feel. The shapes of S and s, on the other hand, needed to be radically redesigned because they simply did not work.’ There were similar problems with original Toscana’s round letters. Farnam added some top heaviness to them, echoing the wedged stems, to give the typeface a better overall consistency.
