TYPEFACE DESIGN
2025 2024 2023
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
SHERYL PENG
PESTO
INSTAGRAM
WEBSITE
DOWNLOAD OTFPesto is a revival of Poster French Old Style Expanded, a late-nineteenth century typeface inspired by popular French types from earlier in the century. Gustave F. Schroeder is largely credited for cutting some of the earliest versions of the lowercase set, although the other contributors are unknown. French Old Style is seen in specimens for a variety of foundries, such as ATF, Central, Dickinson, and many more. What makes Poster French O.S. Expanded special is its tall x-height, heavy, bracketed serifs, and its juxtaposition of round and sharp characteristics.
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
The width of the original design is both its attraction and a complication. The goal of my project was to make Poster French Old Style Expanded more suitable for smaller point sizes and body text, but its expanded nature inherently inclines it to be set at a larger scale. Navigating this balance and finding the perfect width that evokes the spirit of the original while making it more legible was my primary exploration throughout this process.”
Pesto is ideally used for titles and subtitles, but is also suitable for body text. The juxtaposition of its width and roundness with its relation to Renaissance serif types makes Pesto an energetic but elegant typeface.
Reference type specimens
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
The biggest challenges was definitely the limited amount of references I had to use. With only two spreads of a specimen to guide me, many of the uppercase letters were missing. To supplement this, I looked to similar typefaces and other revivals of French Old Style, which were different in their own right and often times the regular, not expanded version. Refining the inconsistencies that this created was the bulk of my typeface project, but I can also recognize that this is what has turned Pesto into its own unique typeface. I chose to reference Poster French O.S. Expanded because I adored the character it injected into the reading experience, so it was very important to me to preserve the old style characteristics, rounded feeling, and the typeface’s other quirks. I knew that I wanted to keep the x height tall, but make the original design slightly more suitable for body text. Doing so meant evaluating how much of the width to shave off to create a more legible typeface. I hope that Pesto makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside!
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
Pesto type specimen by Sheryl Peng
TYPEFACE DESIGN
2025
2024
2023
INSTRUCTOR
Christopher Sleboda
TEACHING ASSISTANTS
Amanda Mundy (2025), Ash Wei (2024)
DESIGN
Erica Pritchett · Built with Cargo
ABOUT
This site documents student work from an advanced typeface design course taught by Christopher Sleboda and open to students in the MFA Graphic Design and BFA Graphic Design programs at Boston University, as well as students in the School of Visual Arts—including those in the new Visual Narrative MFA. The course provides a rigorous introduction to the conceptual and technical processes involved in creating original digital typefaces. Students explore the foundations of letterform construction—including structure, proportion, counterform, spacing, and rhythm—while developing their own typefaces.
Through research, sketching, and the use of digital tools like RoboFont, students engage with typographic history and contemporary practice to design functional and expressive typefaces. Each student produces a working font and a printed type specimen. This site showcases the results of that work, reflecting diverse design approaches and a deep engagement with the craft of type design.