| African fonts are characterised by design considerations that differ from those of Europe and the Americas. At one extreme we have a relaxed and casual approach to life that values the quality of each moment in life far more than it is in the west. In this approach each element of the font, while being part of a community, nevertheless stands on its own and has its own "character". An African font that characterises this approach is Ubuvila (the word means relaxedness or relaxation in Zulu). There is no strict adherence to a design format in Ubuvila nor are the characters constrained by resting on the same baseline. They wander up and down in the sentence and find a comfortable resting place.
There are 94 characters in this African font. It includes all capitals, all lower case letters and the essential punctuation. The numerals are mono-spaced (they are all allocated the same width) so that they will line up correctly in columns of figures. The other letters of the alphabet are spaced according to their width. The characters are also correctly kerned so that they can be effectively used by a designer using a professional layout program. |
