Mário Feliciano writes about Geronimo:
“My interest in historical Spanish typography led me to Geronimo Gil’s types.
The design of Geronimo was a long project. The first sketches — digital sketches to be exact — date back to late 1997. I have worked on the typeface family over more than ten years with some long interruptions.
Geronimo is a historical revival, a digital interpretation of the types cut by Geronimo Gil in Spain in the eighteenth century. In fact it is not only the first digital version, but as far as I can tell it is also the first typeface family ever designed using Gil’s types as a model.
Working in Madrid, Geronimo Gil produced an enormous collection of very interesting and idiosyncratic types that can be found in Muestras de los Nuevos Punzones y Matrices para la Letra de Imprenta executados por Orden de S.M. y de su Caudal destinado a la Dotacion de su Real Biblioteca, a specimen from 1787. It shows titling and text faces both in italic and roman styles. His typefaces are not only very Spanish but they are also very sophisticated when compared to the ones of contemporaries such as Eudald Pradell and Antonio Espinosa.
Geronimo’s typefaces have a sense of modernism but they are not ‘modern’ in a Bodoni or Didot kind of way. Yet they are actually very ‘old style’ – particularly the lowercase letters – but with reduced contrast and a generous x-height. Even in the bigger cuts, ascenders and descenders are not long but appear to be even shorter than in text sizes. This creates a kind of rolling effect while reading.
Geronimo’s typefaces are somehow very Dutch. Something that is not strange at all. Before the golden age of punch cutting in Spain (with Gil, Espinosa and Pradell) most of the important Spanish books were printed in Dutch typefaces. This was their reference, together with the Spanish calligraphic tradition that influenced the design of italics mostly.
My idea was to create a digital typeface family mainly designed for books and magazines that would retain the main characteristics of Gil’s types. To preserve some of its idiosyncratic features — U and J for instance — but to add freedom for my own personal ideas as well. To include designs for bolder weights for instance.
The result is a six weight family with roman and italic styles. While Geronimo was mainly conceived as a typeface for (small) text, it also performs well at bigger sizes most notably the lighter weights.”