Dederon Serif has been specifically designed for book setting. Preliminary sketches were drawn in 2004. Its inspiration — particularly its weight and width proportions — can be traced to the Liberta typeface from the TypoArt type foundry in former Eastern Germany. After a careful study of the model, the design of Dederon branched off into its own direction, finding its distinctive voice and becoming a wholly original type family. Dederon Serif kept most of the elements typical for the Old Style Roman lettering, such as the angle of the stress, the medium x-height, and lower contrast. In large sizes, the typical shapes of the letters stand out — the calligraphic feel characteristic for the Czech typefaces by Oldrich Menhart, the unusual serifs hinting at the angle of the pen, the shapes of the stems, or the terminals of dots and ears.

Upon finishing the serif version, a sans-serif variant called Dederon Sans was added. The construction principles are also derived from the Old Style Roman model, which lends the lettering its open, humanist feel. Yet the design also conforms to the rules of the modern sans serif. Most characteristics of Dederon Sans match the serif version — the weight of individual cuts, the width proportions, x-height, ascenders' and descenders' length, and the slope of the italics.

Each version of Dederon Open Type Std contains the standard Western Latin character set and the Central European characters; a number of basic and accented ligatures, small caps; old style, small caps and caps, table, fraction and superscript numerals; expert glyphs and alternative characters. This brings the total to a comfortable 820 glyphs per weight