In look­ing for a dra­matic font with Roman roots, the design­ers of “The Da Vinci Code” posters and mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als could easily have relied on good ol’ Trajan. Instead, they went with some­thing less common: Penum­bra Serif. The Penum­bra set is derived from the same clas­si­cal Roman let­ter­ing as Trajan, but comes in three fin­ishes — Sans, Flare, and Serif — and a larger range of weights.

Penum­bra Serif Regular

 

Penum­bra Serif Semi Bold

 

Penum­bra Flare

 

Penum­bra Sans

 

A simple flip of the ‘V’ to make an ‘A’ and a gra­di­ent fill cus­tomizes the type­face for the Da Vinci logo.

More back­ground on Penum­bra from Adobe:

Penum­bra, designed by Lance Hidy in 1994, is an all-​capital design. Hidy derived Penum­bra from his poster lettering-​monoline forms with a blend­ing of con­tem­po­rary and tra­di­tional qual­i­ties, which has evolved since the 1970s. Penumbra’s style range from a Futura-​like sans serif to a Sistina-​like serif can be suc­cess­fully used in myriad dis­play sit­u­a­tions. Hidy says about his type­face: “Penum­bra is an ‘androg­y­nous’ let­ter­form which morphs between the worlds of sans serif and serif.”

Update: Lance Hidy sent us some of his per­sonal design work using Penum­bra. Two stamps and a poster for Davis Kidd Book­sellers also fea­ture his illustrations.

See more Penum­bra in May’s FontShop News.