CA Normal is a typeface aiming for beauty without ostensible effects, merely relying on clarity and well balanced proportions. True beauty is not to be found in perfect geometry, so slight irregularities and inconsequences are spread throughout the typographic image. That’s perfection through imperfection.

CA Normal merges influences from European grotesques and American gothics, breeding an experimental mongrel. The underlying concept stays in the background, giving the design a great self-evidence. Although it is doubtful if there can be such thing as neutrality, CA Normal comes pretty close to what people mean when speaking of a neutral font. Nevertheless it’s not faceless, anonymous or confound able. It’s just that the charm comes from subtle details rather than obvious design features.

As good text typefaces must not be too smooth nor too agitated, CA Normal is smuggling little uneven details into the typographic image, that keep the readers eye awake.

The well crafted oblique follows the grotesque tradition which knows no individually drawn italics. A rather unexpected addition is the reverse oblique, a style mainly used for maps.

Under the classic surface lies a modern well equipped font, featuring small caps, a Central European character set and numerals in all kinds of flavors. Numerous ligatures round up the overall impression. By default CA Normal will set numbers as proportional lining figures. But if you prefer oldstyle figures, or tabular figures, just use the OpenType functions of your layout program.

These allow access to the small caps as well, which feature a complete central European character set, brackets, punctuation and lining figures in small caps height.