Isabelle is the closest thing to a metal type revival Jim Rimmer ever did. The original metal face was designed and cut in late 1930s Germany, but its propspects were cut short by the arrival of the war. This was one of Jim’s favourite faces, most likely because of the refined art deco elements that reminded him of his youthful enthusiasm about everything press-related, and the face’s intricately thought balance between calligraphy and typography. Not to mention one of the most beautiful italics ever made.

Jim’s early 2000s digitization included mathematical corrections to the original metal cut, as well as some functional improvements for digital use. In 2013, during the remastering of the entire Rimmer collection, Isabelle underwent a considerable rethinking/expansion and was rechristened Isabelle Pro. The new revisions include small caps, ligatures, seven types of figures, automatic fractions, extended Latin language support, stylistic alternates that include lowercase serif angle options in the roman and looped ascenders/descenders in the italic, and plenty of extra OpenType features like caps-to-small-caps substitution, case-sensitive positioning, ordinals, and extended class-based kerning. Now each of the Isabelle Pro fonts includes over 680 glyphs.

20% of this font’s revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.