FF Hydra supports up to 76 different languages such as Spanish, English, Portuguese, German, French, Turkish, Italian, Polish, Kurdish (Latin), Romanian, Dutch, Hungarian, Czech, Kazakh (Latin), Serbian (Latin), Swedish, Belarusian (Latin), Croatian, Slovak, Finnish, Danish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovenian, Irish, Estonian, Basque, Icelandic, and Luxembourgian in Latin and other scripts.
Please note that not all languages are available for all formats.
The spark behind the creation FF Hydra family came from observing 19th and early 20th century French poster lettering. Its designer Silvio Napoleone found that the styles of this period combined whimsical, economic, and impactful qualities. A typeface that incorporated these characteristics could be especially relevant to today’s design aesthetic. Naploeone began by sketching an extremely condensed sans serif, without any variation in stroke thickness. He experimented with the stroke connections, discovering in the process organic forms which were both interesting and functional in nature. Its name, “Hydra,” came from the snakelike shapes created when the various strokes in the letterforms join together. Hydras are fierce, multi-headed water serpents in Greek mythology that scourged cattle herds and the general countryside. And, as legend tell us, if one of its heads were cut off, two new heads there appeared. FF Hydra was designed for extreme versatility, both in print and screen media. The Regular style provides punch with an economy of width, creating a unique overall impression. Its Expanded version is suitable for longer bodies of text. Other elements of the family include its characteristic soft ink trap connections, oldstyle figures, and true italics.