Mistral (typeface)

Category	Script
Classification	Casual script
Designer(s)	Roger Excoffon
Foundry	Fonderie Olive Amsterdam Type Foundry
Variations	Staccato 222

The "Mistral" restaurant in Bexhill-on-Sea, England

Mistral is a casual script typeface designed by Roger Excoffon for the Fonderie Olive type foundry, and released in 1953. The Amsterdam Type foundry released a version in 1955.

Excoffon based the form of the typeface on his own handwriting. The stroke has an informal graphic quality similar to brush and ink. The lowercase letters are carefully designed to connect on a line to an extent unusual in script fonts. Descenders are long, and increase the sense of motion. The face has several specially-designed ligatures (which have not been duplicated in digital versions). In lowercase Mistral is a true connecting script, similar to cursive writing.

In Australia, the Mistral font is best known for the "it's Saturday" part of the Hey Hey It's Saturday logo. It is also the font used for the Night Court logo.

In 2011, the font was used in hot-pink to advertise the 2011 film Drive.

References

• Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
• Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN 0-7137-1347-X.
• Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.

External links

• Sample text using Mistral.
• Photo album of Montreal storefronts and signs using Mistral.