A headline that keeps its word.
We fell for a fragile serif, got burned, and built this one so it could never happen again. Numen Title is Fraunces with its variable axes pinned by measurement, gently condensed and raised so it stands the way our old headliner stood, and it survives being small: twelve points more legible than the face it replaces, and the strongest display serif we measured.
The recipe: Fraunces at optical size 52, where display presence survives, soft serifs, which measured two points better than hard ones and read warm rather than starched, a 5% condensation with 2% more height for the editorial stance, cap-height figures for headlines with numbers in them, and the family marks, the grown interpunct and a native ✓ and ✗. Fraunces’ own ampersand stays; replacing it would be vandalism.
One honest limit, because publishing the losses is the whole point of how we work: this is a headline face. In the index’s crowding cell, body text packed tighter than any headline will ever be set, it drops to 79.5. That is fine. Set it large, give it air, and it will not let a thumbnail, a preview, or the corner of your eye take the headline away from you.
SIL Open Font License 1.1 · built on Fraunces by Undercase Type · six weights, TTF and WOFF2, in the download.