{"status":200,"not_found":false,"typeface":{"id":182,"created_at":"2019-09-14T20:26:13.942-07:00","updated_at":"2026-10-04T23:00:39.765-07:00","description":"Mara des Bois started in New York. I was missing Berkeley, so one evening I started drawing a set of capital letters based on the lettering David Lance Goines created for Chez Panisse during the 1970s and 1980s. It’s a style that I’ve long admired—the inscriptional Roman proportions, Art Nouveau gestures, triangular serifs, and linocut warmth reference disparate eras and achieve a mix of tonalities. It’s a timeless, versatile, and expressive style.\n\nOver the years, I incorporated other points of inspiration into the type family. Della Robbia, designed by Thomas Maitland Cleland for ATF in 1902, informed the capital letters as I worked to make them less ornamental. I first encountered Della Robbia in an ad for F.H. Robins \u0026 Company, designed by Will Bradley and printed in _The American Chapbook_, and that particular use lodged in my mind as a reference point.\n\nIn my time teaching at Letterform Archive, I was lucky to be able to look over many issues of _Ver Sacrum_, and the lettering in the magazine, which Goines was certainly referencing in his work, became another source of knowledge, helping me to gain a better understanding of the contrast model, the serif structure, and the possible weight range of Mara des Bois.\n\nDavid Lance Goines’s lettering never included a lowercase, but I knew that I wanted Mara des Bois to have one. In trying to figure out how to create a lowercase that would work with the capital proportions, I looked at Edward Johnston’s typeface for the London Underground. The diamond-shaped dots are the most easily identifiable piece of this DNA, but the lowercase shapes owe much to Johnston’s design.\n\nIf you’re interested in trial fonts for testing, email \u003cgraham@a-plus-type.com\u003e.","foundry_id":112,"license_file_url":"https://incremental-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/typeface/license_file/182/A-plus-EULA-20220907-Desktop.pdf?X-Amz-Expires=20\u0026X-Amz-Date=20261005T075914Z\u0026X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256\u0026X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWUSZBONEQWWP4IA%2F20261005%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request\u0026X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host\u0026X-Amz-Signature=c2dc80a92a9e6a47d68c8d63e9319696de17ddc60cca8835b4112ed89174e04a","license_file_unsigned_url":"https://incremental-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/typeface/license_file/182/A-plus-EULA-20220907-Desktop.pdf","license_file_processing":false,"trial_license_file_url":null,"trial_license_file_unsigned_url":null,"safe_trial_license_file_url":"https://assets.futurefonts.com/docs/FutureFonts-TrialFontEULA-V1.2.pdf","name":"Mara des Bois","status":"in-progress","license_coverage":"desktop","approved":true,"comments_count":10,"slug":"mara-des-bois","has_been_live":true,"likes_count":147,"watches_count":138,"posts_count":0,"allow_sales":true,"remote_purchase_url":null,"remote_purchase_url_host":null,"license_table":"basic-1","external_url":null,"vibes":null,"features":"variable,alternates","language":"basic-latin","recommended_size":"small,medium,huge","category":"serif","contrast":"low","ignore_desaturation":null,"visible":true,"finished":false,"dormant":false,"in_progress":true,"uid":182,"safe_to_delete":false,"url":"https://www.futurefonts.com/a-plus-type/mara-des-bois","path":"/a-plus-type/mara-des-bois","blog_title":"Mara des Bois","last_version_live_at_formatted":"September 7, 2022","last_version_live_at_formatted_short":"9/7/22","current_version":{"id":1159,"cost":95,"version_name":"v0.3","version_number":"0.3","major_version_number":0,"minor_version_number":3,"has_trial_files":false,"path":"/a-plus-type/mara-des-bois?v=0.3","url":"https://www.futurefonts.com/a-plus-type/mara-des-bois?v=0.3","live_at_formatted":"September 7, 2022","live_at_formatted_short":"9/7/22","download_trial_url":"https://www.futurefonts.com/typeface_versions/1159/download_trial","cover_slide":{"id":15397,"created_at":"2022-09-07T10:12:32.635-07:00","slidable_id":1159,"slidable_type":"TypefaceVersion","processing":false,"processed":true,"position":0,"uid":15397,"image":{"orginal":"https://incremental-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/slide/image/15397/mdb-carousel-title.png","thumb":"https://incremental-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/slide/image/15397/thumb_mdb-carousel-title.png","small":"https://incremental-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/slide/image/15397/small_mdb-carousel-title.png","medium":"https://incremental-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/slide/image/15397/medium_mdb-carousel-title.png","large":"https://incremental-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/slide/image/15397/large_mdb-carousel-title.png"}}},"can_edit":null}}