Latin

Regular

Lava Variable

世界（world）一词在现代社会意为对所有事物的代称。在大多数的语境中，“世界”的含义更为狭义，经常与地球及其中的所有生命、与整个人类或与国际洲际范围相关联。在这个意义上，世界历史是指整个人类的历史，而世界政治是研究超越国家和大陆的问题的政治科学学科。诸如“世界宗教”、“世界语言”、“世界政府”、“世界大战”、“世界人口”、“世界经济”或及“世界冠军”等术语亦是如此。中文源自佛教概念，由“世”（时间）和“界”（空间）组合而成的世界（lokadhātu），即所谓由所有时间和空间组成的万事万物。唐神龙元年（705），《楞严经》具有文字记载。英语中为“world”，源自古英语“weorold”，指“人间”。现代翻译源自1912年《哲学字汇》将日语“sekai”与“world”、“cosmos”作为对应。“世界”在现代是人类文明所有一切的代称。狭义来讲，通常指人类现今所生活居住的地球，而更偏重于空间。在许多场合下，也以全球、环球（寰球）、环宇（寰宇）、国际、万国等词作为代称。在古代也常以天地、天下、人间、世间、世上、万物、自然等指代。人类所知的地球世界可以用一张世界地图来描述，分为七大洲四大洋。广义来讲，可等于宇宙，即包含了地球之外的空间。“宇宙”一词来源于古汉语，也意为时空的总和。英语中用拉丁词源的“universe”或希腊词源的“cosmos”代指地球世界和地外宇宙的总和。人类强调全世界的某一领域或体系时，也可用“世界”冠名，如植物世界、动物世界等。人类也可预测或设计未来的世界以及想像中的或许不存在的世界，叫做未来世界、虚构世界；当用现代科技手段构造和呈现不存在于现实的世界时，称为虚拟世界或虚拟现实。

Lava was <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/lava-voice-of-a-magazine">originally designed for comfortable long-form reading</a> at 8 to 12 points, to bridge the digital and print editions of <em>Works That Work</em> magazine. The intention was to create a voice of a publication: confident enough not to need to show off, with the comfortable, relaxed manner of an engaged storyteller, ready to handle long stories, but also shine in larger titles. A single typeface for the entire publication. It’s extremely legible and harmonious at small sizes, sophisticated and elegant at large sizes.

Lava, Design concept

Design concept

Although Lava is a strictly contemporary typeface designed for digital environments, which avoids historicising, it has learned its lessons from the past to increase legibility — large counters and apertures, unambiguous letter shapes, generous vertical proportions, consistent spacing and kerning, designed for screen first, and performing well even in low resolution. In print, Lava delivers something that default UI fonts usually lack: refined details, clarity, finely tuned proportions and meticulous spacing, which let the reader forget about the typeface and pay attention to the text.

Lava font, designed for legibility

Designed for optimal legibility

Lava is part of Typotheque’s <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/global">Global Font collection</a> supporting hundreds of languages and various writing scripts. In the long term, Lava intends to support all living languages with a community of active speakers. Currently, Lava supports the following writing scripts: Arabic, Armenian, Bangla, Canadian Syllabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latin, Malayalam, Odia, Ol Chiki, Tamil, Telugu, and Thai. We are working on extending the language to other writing scripts, and this scope of language support makes Lava an unprecedented design project.

Lava, Global font

A truly global font

Dealing with various unrelated writing scripts, while aiming for cultural authenticity and maintaining the design principles of the typeface is extremely challenging. Each writing tradition requires a rethinking of the horizontal and vertical proportions of the typeface, and stroke weight distribution. Additionally, each writing script has a different text density, so the basic stroke weight needs to be modified in order to achieve a balanced overall text image. We need to research the cultural traditions and conventions, and influences of technology, to render diverse languages correctly, with respect, and at the highest aesthetic and technological levels.

Lava, Proportions & Conventions

Proportions and conventions

Lava is also available in a variable font format with automatic size-specific tracking, where the shapes of letters do not change, but their spacing and kerning are size specific, triggered by the user’s size selection. Essentially, we spaced and kerned every font in the family three times, for a small size of about 6 points, a default size of 10 points, and a large size of 48 points, at the intended viewing distance of 40 cm. The increased horizontal spacing is beneficial for reading acuity and significantly improves reading performance. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/size-specific_spacing_of_fonts">Read an essay</a> about the background to the year-long research we carried out into optical spacing.

Lava, Size-specific font spacing

Size-specific font spacing

Each weight of Lava includes nine different kinds of numerals. Default numerals are proportional old-style (ranging) numerals, for use in running text. Lava also includes lining figures for use with capitals letters, because their proportions match the height of caps. Small caps figures for use in all small caps setting, tabular (both lining and old-style figures), superior and inferior figures, and finally circled and circled inverted figures. When you take a licence for this font, you can choose the default numeral variants inside the fonts.

Lava typeface, numeral styles

Numeral styles

Lava also supports the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), featuring a comprehensive repertoire of glyphs for the transcription of linguistic data. The font also covers First Nations roman orthographies of Indigenous languages spoken in Canada (Wakashan, Algonquian, Salishan, Tsimshianic, Iroquoian and Eskaleut languages), and, additionally, it covers African Indigenous roman orthographies for languages such as Hausa, Ɗuwai, Igbo, Akan, Kabiye, Ewe, etc. The IPA support is embedded inside the Latin fonts and every other language version, so you don’t need to take a separate licence for it.

Lava font, International Phonetic Alphabet

Phonetic script

Lava Math is a separate font that is delivered with the complete package of Lava, and contains symbols for mathematical notation. This is a single weight font file, but it includes also the Math Italics, Math Bold, Math Bold Italics for Latin and Greek letters required for mathematics. The font includes math symbols and operators, horizontal and vertical delimiters, math diacritics, and extendable arrows. Lava Math is making use of OpenType MATH table, currently, there isn’t unified support of this table, and we tested the fonts with the Movemen MathTools 6 plugin for InDesign, Microsoft Office and web browsers. Lava Math covers all common math equations, but it is not a general purpose math font for traditional LaTeX setting.

Lava font, math notation

A font for mathematical typesetting

CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) typography uses different conventions compared to Latin typesetting. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/typesetting-cjk-text">Read this article</a> to learn about the main typographic differences, including vertical and horizontal text orientation, line height requirements, text alignment, hyphenation practices and the distinct rules for line breaks and punctuation placement.

CJK typesetting principles

Chinese, Japanese and Korean typesetting

Chinese characters vary across East Asia due to regional language evolution and reform. Although Unicode unifies them into a single Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) block, fonts also need to align with regional preferences. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/understanding-cjk-regional-character-variants">Read about the reasons behind these variations and how to go about choosing the right fonts</a>. When you order a Typotheque CJK font, you actually receive three fonts, each optimised for a different region. 

CJK regional character variants

Understanding CJK regional character variants

Chinese

Cantonese (Simplified)

Cyrillic

Abaza

Adyghe

Altai

Avar

Azeri (Cyrillic)

Azeri (Latin)

Balkar

Bashkir

Belarusian

Bosnian

Bulgarian

Buryat

Chechen

Chuvash

Crimean Tatar

Dargin

Dungan

Evenki

Gagauz

Ingush

Kabardian

Kalmyk

Karakalpak

Kazakh

Khakas

Kirghyz

Komi

Koryak

Kumyk

Lezgian

Macedonian

Manci

Mansi

Mari

Mongolian

Montenegrin

Mordvin (Erzya)

Mordvin (Moksha)

Muslim Tat, Latin

Nanai

Nenets

Nogai

Ossetic

Romanian

Russian

Rusyn 

Selkup

Serbian

Shor

Tabasaran

Tajik (Cyrillic)

Talysh, Latin

Tatar

Tsakhur

Turkmen

Tuva

Tuvan

Udmurt

Uighur

Ukrainian

Uzbek

Western Mari

Yakut

Devanagari

Awadhi

Bhojpuri

Bodo

Dogri

Dotyali

Eastern Tamang

Goan Konkani

Hindi

Kangri

Konkani

Magahi

Maithili

Marathi

Nepali

Sindhi

Georgian

Greek

Greek (classical)

Greek (modern)

Japanese

Kannada

Korean

Abidji

Abron

Abua

Achinese

Achuar-Shiwiar

Acoli

Adangme

Adara

Adele

Adioukrou

Afar

Afrikaans

Agatu

Aghem

Ahanta

Ahtna

Akoose

Alago

Albanian

Alekano

Aleut

Anaang

Anufo

Anyin

Ao Naga

Arabic, Chadian Spoken

Aragonese

Aromanian

Ashe

Asturian

Awak

Awing

Aymara

Baatonum

Bafia

Bafut

Baga Sitemu

Baka

Balinese

Banda, West Central

Bandi

Bangwinji

Baoulé

Bapuku

Bari

Basa

Basque

Batak Toba

Bedawiyet

Bekwarra

Bemba

Bena

Bench

Beng

Benga

Berom

Bete-Bendi

Bété, Daloa

Bété, Guiberoua

Bhele

Bikol

Bilen

Bimoba

Bini

Birifor, Southern

Bisã

Bislama

Blackfoot

Bokobaru

Breton

Bube

Buginese

Bulu

C’Lela

Cahungwarya

Carib

Catalan

Cebaara Senoufo

Lava was designed for magazine use, but far transcends its original application. It handles large quantities of text with ease; it is extremely legible and harmonious at small sizes, yet also sophisticated and elegant at large ones.

Lava

Lava 中文

Lava 中文

Ventura pocket books

The New Republic

Places of Resonance

Charlotte Perriand, Gallimard