Libre Caslon Condensed & Bricolage Grotesque

The only two faces on Design Outcomes, and the people who drew them.

Why this matters

There’s no predicting the revenue, growth or churn of something that doesn’t exist. You build it to find out.

Infrastructure, Not a Feeling

Product and design are consolidating under technology leaders across the industry. The case for keeping design at the table is an infrastructure case, and this piece makes it with the receipts from one reorg.

A Caslon line does the talking at large sizes, where its narrow set holds a full sentence and the serifs stay sharp over a photograph. Bricolage takes the parts you scan, like a headline in a card grid or an eyebrow you read in half a second. The two share a tight tracking, Bricolage never goes italic, and the Caslon saves its italic for the pull quote, which is what makes them read as one voice.

Libre Caslon Condensed

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 & ¶ § ﬁ ﬂ “ ” ‘ ’ ? !

There’s no predicting the revenue, growth or churn of something that doesn’t exist. You build it to find out.

A condensed cut of Libre Caslon, drawn by Ertekin Erdin and released in 2023 under the SIL Open Font License. It descends from Libre Caslon Text by Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida of Impallari Type, which revives the types William Caslon cut in London in the 1720s: the same letters that set the first printings of the American Declaration of Independence.

On this site the face runs upright everywhere but one place. The narrow set and the sharp serifs carry the voice on their own, and the italic is saved for the pull quotes inside articles, where a change of posture marks a change of speaker. Weights 400 to 700 are on hand in two variable files, upright and italic; Design Outcomes uses Regular in both.

Bricolage Grotesque

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 & @ # “ ” ‘ ’ ? !

A variable grotesque by Mathieu Triay of Atelier Triay, released in 2022 under the SIL Open Font License. It started as a fork of Mayenne Sans by Jérémy Landes of Studio Triple and grew by pulling from British and French sources: the compressed weights lean toward Grotesque Nº9, the regular weights toward Antique Olive, and the small optical sizes pick up exaggerated ink traps.

Three axes do the work here. Weight runs from 200 to 800, width from 75 to 100, and optical size from 12 to 96, so one family sets a 96px headline and an 11px eyebrow without either looking borrowed from the other.

Weights and widths

200Design Outcomes

300Design Outcomes

400Design Outcomes

500Design Outcomes

600Design Outcomes

700Design Outcomes

800Design Outcomes

wdth 75Bricolage Grotesque

wdth 87Bricolage Grotesque

wdth 100Bricolage Grotesque

400Libre Caslon Condensed

500Libre Caslon Condensed

600Libre Caslon Condensed

700Libre Caslon Condensed

400 italicLibre Caslon Condensed

700 italicLibre Caslon Condensed

Try them

Click into either line and type. The slider sets the size.

Size

Design is infrastructure.

Where each face works

Role	Face	Setting
Article headlines	Bricolage Grotesque	Bold 700, tracked −0.015em
Carousel and card headlines	Libre Caslon Condensed	Regular, upright
Section and card titles	Bricolage Grotesque	Bold 700
Standfirst, in-article heads, teachable	Bricolage Grotesque	Regular to Semibold
Eyebrows and labels	Bricolage Grotesque	Extrabold 800, caps, 0.02em
Pull quotes in articles	Libre Caslon Condensed Italic	Regular italic, 40px, the only italic on the site
"Why this matters" line	Libre Caslon Condensed	Regular, upright, 30 to 38px
Nav wordmark	Libre Caslon Condensed	Regular, upright, 22px
Field Notes, case studies, shop, footer	Libre Caslon Condensed	Regular, upright
Body copy, captions, buttons, meta	Bricolage Grotesque	Regular to Semibold, optical size auto

The people who drew them

Ertekin Erdin

Libre Caslon Condensed, 2023

Drew the condensed cut from Libre Caslon Text and opened it under the OFL.

github.com/ertekinno/libre-caslon-condensed

Pablo Impallari & Rodrigo Fuenzalida

Libre Caslon Text and Display, Impallari Type

The revival of William Caslon’s types that the condensed cut descends from.

fonts.google.com/specimen/Libre+Caslon+Text

Mathieu Triay

Bricolage Grotesque, Atelier Triay, 2022

Designed the family and its three axes, building on Jérémy Landes’s Mayenne Sans.

github.com/ateliertriay/bricolage

Both families are open source under the SIL Open Font License, which is part of why they are here: the site can host them itself and credit the designers by name. Nothing else renders on Design Outcomes, body copy included.