Balkan Sans
KOLLEKTSIA ! ART CONTEMPORAIN EN URSS ET EN RUSSIE (1950-2000)
Balkan Floods
Visual identity for the biennial Croatian exhibition of design
Design concept
Balkan is a bi-script Latin and Cyrillic typeface system rooted in the linguistic proximity of languages of former Yugoslavia (Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian and Serbian). The Balkan typeface system depoliticises and reconciles the scripts, for the sake of education, tolerance and, above all, communication. Balkan transliterates and translates Croatian Latin into Serbian Cyrillic and vice versa, thus the fonts serve as educational software capable of reconciling disparate scripts.
Four styles
There are two styles of Balkan – style A situates the Latin characters on top, and Cyrillic at the bottom, while style B reverses this order. There are three more substyles (1, 2, 3) in option A – each with slightly different treatments of elements that exceed the bounding box of the words.
Transliteration options
Originally, Balkan was developed for writing Serbian and Croatian, which share the same sounds. Later, we expanded Balkan to also include other Cyrillic- and Latin-based languages, which was a complex task as there are a large number of these, and there is no single agreed standard for its transliteration into Latin script. We reviewed the most common romanisation schemes to create OpenType Stylistic Sets that encompass most common options for transliterating Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian letters into English and German.
- DesignMarija Juza (Cyrillic, Latin)Nikola Djurek (Cyrillic, Latin)
- AwardsTDC Typographic Excellence 2012, Special Jury Award at 23rd Biennal of Design Slovenia 2012, Typographica Favorite Typefaces of 2012, Grand Prix Croatian Designers Society 2016
- Released2012
Cyrillic
- Rusyn
- Kazakh
- Russian
- Abaza
- Buryat
- Dargin
- Kabardian
- Komi
- Bulgarian
- Chechen
- Kirghyz
- Macedonian
- Ossetic
- Serbian
- Tajik (Cyrillic)
- Ukrainian
- Belarusian
- Yakut
- Abkhaz
- Dolgan
- Kalmyk
- Adyghe
- Avar
- Dungan
- Balkar
- Karakalpak
- Mordvin (Moksha)
- Nivkh
- Enets
- Ingush
- Itelmen
- Kumyk
- Azeri (Cyrillic)
- Bashkir
- Selkup
- Nanai
- Nenets
- Lak
- Lezgian
- Mordvin (Erzya)
- Tabasaran
- Altai
- Chukcha
- Chuvash
- Yupik
- Even
- Khanty
- Koryak
- Manci
- Nogai
- Tuva
- Tatar
- Uighur
- Rutul
- Tuvan
- Moldovan
- Mari
- Aghul
- Evenki
- Khakas
- Mansi
- Nganasan
- Tsakhur
- Udmurt
- Kildin Sami
Latin
- English
- Comorian
- Luba-Kasai
- Marquesan
- Danish
- Dutch
- Italian
- Haitian
- Estonian
- German
- Friulian
- Galician
- French
- Finnish
- Fijian
- Frisian
- Luxemburgish
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Breton
- Bislama
- Basque
- Afar
- Afrikaans
- Zulu
- Tetum
- Portuguese
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Catalan
- Polish
- Slovak
- Czech
- Maltese
- Albanian
- Indonesian
- Irish Gaelic
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Slovene
- Rhaeto-Romanic
- Hungarian
- Sorbian
- Kurdish
- Hawaiian
- Esperanto
- Welsh
- Sámi (Northern)
- Faroese
- Greenlandic
- Icelandic
- Croatian
- Romanian
- Romani
- Turkish
- Bosnian
- Phonetics
- Sámi (Inari)
- Sámi (Lule)
- Sámi (Southern)
- Vietnamese
- Azeri (Latin)
- Interlingua
- Sanskrit transliteration
- Malay
- Māori
- Turkmen
- Uzbek
- Tagalog (Filipino)
- Malagasy
- Crimean Tatar
- Guaraní
- Kashubian
- Xhosa
- Silesian
- Cornish
- Manx
- Oromo
- Somali (Latin)
- Aymara
- Ganda
- Ido
- Javanese
- Gikuyu
- Kinyarwanda
- Kirundi
- Kongo
- Kwanyama
- Nauruan
- Navajo
- Ndebele (Northern)
- Ndebele (Southern)
- Quechua
- Samoan
- Shona
- Sotho
- Sundanese
- Tahitian
- Tongan
- Tsonga
- Tswana
- Twi
- Wolof
- Yoruba
- Cheyenne
- Chichewa
- Kiribati
- Swati
- Pinyin
- Arabic transliteration
- Ladin
- Igbo
- Karelian
- Veps
- Chamorro
- Marshallese
- Montenegrin
- Náhuatl
- Norfuk
- Occitan
- Papiamento
- Pedi
- Sardinian
- Seychelles Creole
- Tok Pisin
- Tuvalu
- Aromanian
- Ga
- Gagauz
- Ulithian
- Venda
- Chokwe
- Chuukese
- Kituba
- Lingala
- Maninka
- Nyanja
- Otomi
- Palauan
- Rarotongan
- Sango
- Temne
- Umbundu
- Bemba
- Gwich’in
- Scottish Gaelic
- Tokelauan
- Aranese
- Cofán
- Pictograms
- Norn
- Romaji
- Old Norse
- Chiquitano
- Araona
- Cavineña
- Ayoreo
- ЖЖ
Serbian transliteration
ss01
This Stylistic Set replaces the standard transliteration of Russian letters with its Serbian equivalent. - ЩЩ
Alternative Romanisation
ss02
Since Cyrillic is used by dozens of languages, there is no single standard for its transliteration into Latin script. This stylistic set offers alternative romanisation for transliterating Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian letters into English and other Latin-based languages. - ЩЩ
Alternative Romanisation 2
ss03
Since Cyrillic is used by dozens of languages, there is no single standard for its transliteration into Latin script. This stylistic set offers alternative romanisation for transliterating Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian letters into English and other Latin-based languages. - ЪЪ
Alternative hard signs
ss04
Cyrillic hard sign has no phonetic value of its own an can be represented in various ways. This stylistic set provides some options.