FF Tisa is a typeface initially created while studing in the MA Typeface Design course at the University of Reading. The typeface was primarily created for use in magazines that are either printed by web-fed offset or gravure printing techniques. Nevertheless, the typeface can also be successfully used in other printed media, such as newspapers, annual reports etc.

Tisa is a low contrast serif typeface. It is an attempt to create a contemporary version of the nineteenth century woodtype slab serif typefaces. Some ‘humanist’ characteristics, such as slightly oblique stress, might make it easier to read in longer texts.

Some basic characteristics: slightly oblique stress, pronounced serifs, low contrast, large x-height and visibly taller small caps.

Due to its low stroke contrast Tisa is also surprisingly legible in small sizes and works fine in demanding printing techniques, such as gravure printing or low resolution laser printing. The typeface has a relatively large x-height which. Small caps are visibly taller compared to lowercase letters, and can be used effectively in emphasizing parts of text.

An illustration of ink traps on lowercase characters

The italic version was not primarily created to have the role of emphasising - it is more a secondary typeface to the regular version. From this reason a fairly upright ‘hybrid’ italic was designed which is slightly lighter comparing to the regular version. However, the angle of slant is mathematically not the same in all glyphs and varies roughly from 7 to 5 degrees. Another peculiarity of the italic version is that the main strokes are slightly wider on the baseline. This characteristic gives the italic typeface some additional stability.

Variable angle of slant in italics

So far six versions of Tisa were released by FontShop International: regular, italic, medium, medium italic, bold and bold italic. The typeface was selected by the TDC judges to receive the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design for the year 2007.