In 2020 we started off Gialloʼs original design as non-proportional monospace font, which step by step grew into a fully packed Roman type text version. Its features reach out to 16th century Italian old style serif fonts such as works by Robert Granjon (Gros Cicero et al.). Giallo® combines this calligraphic warmth with a digital vector look and a modern approach to the letter construction as well as proportions. The wide range of weights shape different characteristics especially when contrasting between Gialloʼs Light and Black extremes and make the typeface pretty handy for representative display purposes as well as a workhorse for text based applications. The high grade of details in the letters really shine when used in big sizes. During the design process and due to Gialloʼs vector shaped look, there has been constant exploration of how to break traditional type design methods and to create characters that would normally not be possible or thought of, when using traditional tools in regular ways to design or cut a typeface. At the same time going this direction, care was taken to preserve the appearance of its Roman type roots as much as possible to make Giallo® a versatile and functional hybrid typeface.
Giallo Roman Black
Giallo Roman Black Oblique
Giallo Roman Heavy
Giallo Roman Heavy Oblique
Giallo Roman Bold
Giallo Roman Bold Oblique
Giallo Roman Medium
Giallo Roman Medium Oblique
Giallo Roman Book
Giallo Roman Book Oblique
Giallo Roman Regular
Giallo Roman Regular Oblique
Giallo Roman Light
Giallo Roman Light Oblique
→ 7 Weights + Obliques
Due to Gialloʼs design approach also to be a functional variable font (incl. in our »Full Family Bundle«), especially in the digital field of static and moving image use cases, we designed a »Oblique« axis, which is rather atypical in comparison to other Roman type fonts. This comes in handy for steplessly interpolation to Gialloʼs original straight cuts. Unlike sans-serif fonts, however, the difference in line width allowed us a slight hybridization into the italic style. Especially with certain (lower case) characters that donʼt deviate too much from regular styles to italics. Reducing the character width also enables a higher contrast to the straight cuts. Both, Giallo® Roman and Giallo® Roman Oblique, can be seamlessly adjusted as variable font in their weights (100 — 700) and their direct connection via the oblique axis (000 — 100). Use the sliders down below to check that out.
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“H2Odio” —2006
Il caso »Venere privata« (1970)
Il thrilling assunse una connotazione sempre più violenta ed erotica, soprattutto nella descrizione della figura dell’assassino
L’uomo dagli occhi di ghiaccio
Oltre a imitarne il modello nei contenuti, questi nuovi thrilling si rifecero anche nei titoli ai primi film di Dario Argento, portacolori del genere anche all’estero, ha prodotto numerosi film di qualità e facendo affermare definitivamente il genere. Nacquerò così sulla scia de L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo, pellicole come La tarantola dal ventre nero, La coda dello scorpione, Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate, L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco, La sanguisuga conduce la danza, L’uomo più velenoso del cobra, Il gatto dagli occhi di giada, Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro, La volpe dalla coda di velluto, Il sorriso della iena, Nella stretta morsa del ragno ovvero una ricca serie di film a titolazione zoonomica.
Ma nacquero anche dei film d’autore che quasi raggiungono il modello argentiano come Giornata nera per l’ariete di Luigi Bazzoni, Il profumo della signora in nero di Francesco Barilli, Cosa avete fatto a Solange? di Massimo Dallamano, E tanta paura di Paolo Cavara, La corta notte delle bambole di vetro e Chi l’ha vista morire? di Aldo Lado, La donna della domenica di Luigi Comencini, Gran bollito di Mauro Bolognini e Il mostro di Luigi Zampa. Nei primi anni 70 si ha un vero e proprio boom del thrilling, tant’è che solo tra il 1971 e il 1972 vennero girati e distribuiti nelle sale oltre trenta film appartenenti al filone, diretti dai maggiori registi italiani del cinema di genere; tra questi sono da menzionare Mio caro assassino di Tonino Valerii, un giallo avvincente e a lungo trascurato[5], e L’etrusco uccide ancora di Armando Crispino, uno dei primi esempi di contaminazione tra giallo e horror, considerato il capostipite del »filone archelogico« di questo genere cinematografico.
Nel 1975 Dario Argento realizza Profondo rosso (film che inizialmente avrebbe dovuto avere anch’esso un titolo dal richiamo faunistico, ovvero La tigre dai denti a sciabola) che ottiene un grande successo, anche a livello internazionale, ed è considerato da molti critici e dagli stessi fan come uno dei titoli più riusciti nella storia del giallo all’italiana; Profondo rosso è sicuramente, tra tutte le opere thrilling, quella più famosa e celebrata, ancora oggi trasmessa spesso e con successo in televisione. Sette note in nero di Lucio Fulci (1977): il particolare degli occhi, cifra stilistica tipica del regista. Lucio Fulci, futuro maestro del gore italiano, girerà contributi di indubbio valore come l’hitchockiano Una sull’altra, il violento Una lucertola con la pelle di donna, il rurale Non si sevizia un paperino e l’onirico Sette note in nero. Il regista emiliano Pupi Avati dirigerà nel 1976 uno dei più famosi gialli horror italiani, La casa dalle finestre che ridono. Ironicamente l’anno successivo è la volta del parodistico Tutti defunti... tranne i morti che oltre agli stessi regista e sceneggiatori, presenta molti attori della precedente pellicola. Altri film sono anche precursori dello slasher (in particolare della saga hollywoodiana di Venerdì 13[3]), come Reazione a catena di Mario Bava o I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale di Sergio Martino.
Con l’arrivo degli anni 80 e la nascita negli Stati Uniti d’America di un nuovo modo di fare cinema thriller e horror, il giallo all’italiana ha quasi terminato di esistere. Renée Simonsen in Sotto il vestito niente di Carlo Vanzina (1985), tra le ultime opere afferenti al filone originale. Poche sono state le pellicole che sono rimaste devote ai primi film del genere, tra queste ci sono Tenebre, Phenomena e Opera di Dario Argento, Macabro, La casa con la scala nel buio, Morirai a mezzanotte e Le foto di Gioia di Lamberto Bava (figlio di Mario), Caramelle da uno sconosciuto di Franco Ferrini, L’assassino è ancora tra noi di Camillo Teti, Il mostro di Firenze di Cesare Ferrario e Tramonti fiorentini di Gianni Siragusa e Paolo Frajoli (questi ultimi tre titoli ispirati al caso del Mostro di Firenze), Lo squartatore di New York e Murderock - Uccide a passo di danza di Lucio Fulci, Mystère e Sotto il vestito niente di Carlo Vanzina (quest’ultimo ebbe anche un seguito apocrifo diretto da Dario Piana).
→ Why that italian name? Why's that font named »Yellow«?
We already named some of Gialloʼs stylistic influences above and if youʼre able to understand or even speak Italian or youʼre just a smartass, you might already guessed it, why we somehow might came up with that name. But what you might not have known is that the term »Giallo« also refers to a literature genre, coming up in the first half of last century in Italy, as well as a movie genre, which first appeared in the 60ʼs right after the so called »Neorealismo« (Italian neorealism). Giallo movies can be described as mystery and crime fictions which shifted more and more into the psychological thriller and horror genre. During itʼs heydays in the 70s and 80s directors like Mario Bava or Dario Argento did unique movies, which heavily influenced later American slashers (take this as advice: Thereʼs still a lot of trash [also fun to watch] during that period, but if you wanna dig some, check out movies from that specific era). Most Giallo movies can be seen as cheap amusement, but there are some masterpieces like »Suspiria« (1977), which oscillate between that simple entertainment and an artistic, scenographically fetishizing type of film work, still being worth watched today.
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Black-gloved assassins, a writer impotently trapped in Rome, perverse chromosomal make-up, the something-not-quite-right, flashback — combined with flair of outrageous set pieces and jaw-dropping gore. Light and dark, sanity and insanity, fact and fiction, real and unreal, guilt and innocence, life and death. The impulse had become irresistible. There was only one answer to the fury that tortured him. And so he committed his first act of murder. He had broken the most deep-rooted taboo and found not guilt, not anxiety or fear, but freedom. Every humiliation which stood in his way could be swept aside by him simple act of annihilation: Murder.
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The idea behind the video nasties list in the first place was that the public had to be protected against the corrupting influences of sexually explicit or graphically violent films. Even today, horror films may be decried as pandering to the worst in human nature, and even blamed for creating real-life murderers. However horror films can be as conservative and reactionary as any Mary Whitehouse figure. Think of, for example, the Catholic Church’s active contribution to the filming of »The Exorcist« (William Friedkin, 1973). It goes down a different route. Like any genre of film – why should it be different here — there are good Gialli and bad Gialli.
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This means that horror films can be curiously inconsistent. Absolutely no pretense is made in Friday the »13th: A New Beginning« (Danny Steinmann, 1985) when a girl reveals her breasts with a cry of “It’s showtime!” — the audience wants its kicks, and if they want MPA-friendly titillation, who are the filmmakers so deny them? But that girl ends up dying. They usually do in horror films. “Have sex and die” is one of the most well-known tropes in horror. Whilst a film may use it innocently, seeing it as an easy way to give the audience sex and horror at the same time, there’s always a danger that the dead girls are being punished specifically because of their sexuality.
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There’s telepathic communication and — further — telepathic communication with insects. There are both a psychopathic killer and a mutated monster, conflated into one all-purpose bogeyman. There is the academy full of vicious schoolgirls and the terminally weird staff: Mrs Bruckner — who was raped by a deformed lunatic and bore his dreadful child — and the chic headmistress, who is improbably convinced that Jennifer’s sleepwalking is a sign of incipient insanity or demonic possession, a chamber of horrors and a policeman in chains, a lunatic asylum located somewhere in the ninth circle of hell and a boarding school in the »Swiss Transylvania«.
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Jane shreds the the content of Peter’s bag. Elsa struggles with the store detective, and then she is getting attacked by another man, a tramp. Other scenes include a fight breaking out in a police station, a couple arguing vehemently in public and a struggle in a restaurant. These are background incidents, suggesting that violence is endemic to the entire society. Even the dogs give into the urge to attack and maim. No matter how brightly lit the environment is, no matter what we do to make everything clean and light, we’re always going to face violence in real life, committed by ourselves or others. It doesn’t matter how many streetlamps the local authorities installs, or, more to the point, how many horror films the government bans. Blaming films and books is not the answer because the violence and potential malice is there with or without them.
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Deliberately theatrical — the opening conference is introduced with a parting of red curtains — a play with the melodrama of telepathy and the ability to see into the future with remarkable dexterity. Triggered by the genuine insights of the ill-fated medium, seen reacting in horror moments before the axe-murderer breaks down her apartment door, the precognitive theme is brilliantly carried through the entire sleight-of-hand narrative as a device foreshadowing each death. It takes its provocative Freudian motifs and visually elevates them into high art. With every voyeuristic nook and cranny explored by the purposeful camera. Even the daylight locations have been rendered as sinister and dangerous as the Edward Hopper-inspired nighttime ones, unlocking primal fears in the spectator they didn’t even know they had.
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There are more practicing Satanists in Turin than in any other European city and I wanted that superstitious undercurrent unfolding in the background. Turin is actually where the Italian Film industry was originally based in the silent era. During the 1930s Mussolini moved it to Rome, to be nearer out of vanity, but I always preferred Turin. A veritable checklist of the genre’s most salient style motifs and story points. Gialli are often about modernity — the experience of living in the modern age — and the problems such experiences lead to. They are Italian-made murder-mysteries / horror movie hybrids which reached their peak of popularity in the 1970’s.
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Its extraordinary style is not there just for style’s sake. If it had been, it would still have made the film memorable. But it becomes all the more striking for its connection with film’s focus on society’s perversities. Representing the »jet set«: independently wealthy, foreign visitors to Italy; a community of leisured cultural migrants no longer bound by nationalist borders. As Carlo compares, Marc represents the bourgeoisie while he (Carlo) is the proletariat. We can take that example farther to propose that the fantasy of the international dolce vita lifestyle is a self-conscious fictional concept reflecting the artificiality of the fiction film we are watching.
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A film which includes most of the genre’s codes and conventions, like its ambivalence towards modernity, the (imagined) locations which are these films’ settings, the impact of bourgeois detectives, depravity and of course, the over-the-top set pieces. Throughout the classic gialli, we are presented with a variety of imagined locations; imagined in the sense that these are tourist impressions. fantasies and have little bearing on the actual place. While the external location shooting establishes an imagined experience of travel, the preponderance of interior sequences (those scenes shot indoors) in these films suggests an interiority of the mind. The killer’s madness not only comes from inside the family, but also from inside the killer’s mind.
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Most police detectives who appear in gialli tend to be fairly useless at solving the murders. Here the detective appears to be more interested in food than solving the crimes. He is always filmed around food; when not eating a sandwich, he is beating up an unresponsive vending machine. For added Comic relief, he conducts his questioning with his mouth full of food. The police are frequently (although not always) presented as buffoons and incompetent. In Italian vernacular cinemas of the day, the Giallo lived happily alongside the Polizioteschi, an Italian crime film, as a separate genre. Gialli and Polizioteschi coexist: one concerning amateur detectives as crime solvers, the other focusing on professional detectives’ investigations.
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These sequences — the gory murders and graphic deaths of the killers — are known as »set pieces«. Set pieces are moments the sequences are protracted beyond simply progressing the story. For example, we see (what we assume is) the killer stalking a person in its apartment, the protracted silence emerges, and then the persistent and repeated bashing of the victims mouth and teeth against the corner of its fireplace mantel and the corner of its desk, before finally being stabbed through the back of its head. These moments are moments when narratives stops, and we are asked to experience the sublime beauty of violence (violence made sublime via the agitation of the filmmaker).
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Besides the overwhelming qualities of the statue that dominates the piazza, another construction inhabits the expanse: a glass fronted, single-storey building called the Blue Bar. Whilst the bar appears to be a real-life location, it was actually a wooden prop erected in the piazza and modeled on the bar depicted in Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting Nighthawks. The bar was designed in a hyperrealistic, postmodern style which juxtaposes it against the more muted look of the piazza, creating a point interest most notably through its striking use of light in an otherwise grey and dark environment. The bar’s signage is illuminated in a cyan blue, a color that links the bar to Helga Ullman’s apartment with its modernist menorah artwork, lit in the same strikingly unusual color.
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A location that proves to be of great importance in uncovering the secrets of the murderous crimes that, have taken place is the House of the Screaming Child (the real-life location, Villa Scott, was designed by architect Pietro Fenoglio), a vivid yellow Art Nouveau / Liberty-style villa that was once Carlo’s family home. The space proves to be deceptive, revealed as a derelict, crumbling old mansion, the secrets of the house entombed behind walls and hidden beneath plaster. Yet upon leaving the space, another piece of plaster falls to reveal an additional vital clue that alters the scene entirely. The ornamentation present in the house consist of organic, floral shapes of Art Nouveau and Liberty-style windows alongside baroque elements, a stark contrast to the geometric forms of both the fascistic-style piazza and Marcus’ modern apartment.
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The viewer may interpret the following shots as either revealing Arnò’s thought process (the visual reconstruction within his mind’s eye) or showing what the killer in fact sees at the point in time. The concept of vision is key to the film. In the murder sequence only the eye of the killer is seen and we follow his actions as viewed through that eye. I am aware of the fact that I have influenced a number of film directors: Brian de Palma (especially in Dressed to kill [1980]), John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino, among others. Horror is everywhere in the culture of the young generation, in cartoons, in music, in films, in pictures (…). It’s fundamental to our modern sensibility.
→ 803 characters
Right now the Latin Extended Character Set of Giallo® contains plenty of punctuations, symbols, arrows as well as special ligatures beside the regular ones. Four alternative stylistic sets are included. Set 01 provides a single-storey lowercase »a«, Set 02 a single-storey lowercase »g«, Set 03 an alternative »7« for all kind of numerals and Set 04 an alternative »®«. Check down below for a complete listing of all Open Type features, which have been so far implemented to Giallo®. We are currently working on monospace and italic extensions, which will be added as soon as possible. Future updates of Giallo Roman are of course for free, if you already purchased a license.
→ Apple Macintosh MacOS Roman (Standard Latin) MacOS Central European Latin MacOS Croatian MacOS Iceland MacOS Romanian MacOS Turkish
→ Microsoft Windows MS Windows 1250 Central European Latin MS Windows 1252 Western (Standard Latin) MS Windows 1254 Turkish Latin MS Windows 1257 Baltic Latin
→ ISO 8859 8859-1 Latin-1 Western European 8859-2 Latin-2 Central European 8859-3 Latin-3 South European 8859-4 Latin-4 North European 8859-9 Latin-5 Turkish 8859-13 Latin-7 Baltic Rim 8859-15 Latin-9 8859-16 Latin-10 South-Eastern European