Bitter

Sol Matas began Bitter on a pixel grid. The first stage of the drawing was done entirely in pixels, square by square, and only afterward were the curves worked in, which goes some way to explaining the flat, even look of the face: strokes barely change in thickness, and the slab serifs are as heavy as the stems they hang from, with square ends.

She meant it for reading on a computer or a phone, and she made the Regular darker than a print Regular would usually be. On a page that gives paragraphs a strong, dense color. The x-height is large, from the humanist side of type, so small text holds up.

Bitter dates from 2011. The family on this page has 18 styles from Thin to Black, each weight with its italic, and the OpenType list runs long, small caps, old style and lining figures, tabular figures, a slashed zero, fractions and discretionary ligatures among it.

How would we use it? The Regular for article text on a screen, at a modest size. Thin and Extra Light lose the point of a slab, the serifs go spindly, so we would leave those for big display lines and lean on Bold or Black for a headline with some weight behind it.