Eskapade in “Horror Humanum Est”

For his 2021 book Horror Humanum Est, the French author and designer Cédric Villain examines totally horrible facts throughout history, all illustrated with sleek and cute graphics. The book maintains a good-natured and funny tone, and presents a wide overview of what humanity can do at its most horrible.

For the book’s bold design, Villain makes extensive use of Alisa Nowak’s Eskapade, a typeface that creates new common ground between a nimble oldstyle serif font and an experimental Fraktur. Both are utilized to great effect: the serif is the primary paragraph font which sets the background context for the Fraktur’s aggressive and jarring headlines, callouts, and infographics.

As a family, Eskapade’s serif styles have a contemporary ease, light typographic colour, and smooth design — perfect for continuous book and magazine text. Eskapade Fraktur’s visual punch is more than able to capture the reader’s attention in headlines, visual identities, packaging, and branding and logotypes, especially with the second set of double-stroked decorative capitals that encourage experimental use and creative application.