A little under a month and a half ago — following a decade of development — designer Kris Sowersby of the New Zealand-based Klim Type Foundry announced the release of two new font families: Heldane Display and Heldane Text.

Both of these typefaces are modern reinterpretations of a collection of typefaces that date all the way back to the Renaissance. Essentially what he did was examine the works of classic Dutch and French type designers — such as Hendrik van den Keere, Claude Garamont (AKA Garamond), Robert Granjon, and Simon de Colines — then took the best parts of their respective typefaces and almagamated them into a cohesive whole.

I consider Heldane a third generation garalde typeface drawn from secondary sources. […] I used secondary sources because I didn’t have access to primary specimens or to original Renaissance books when I started drawing Heldane. I used facsimile prints, scans, and images found online. During the 10-year development process I acquired primary specimens of Van den Keere and Garamont, but they didn’t change the fundamentals of Heldane.

As he explains in that blog post, Heldane Display is best used at larger sizes, while Heldane Text thrives at small sizes. I’m particularly fond of Helane Display’s italic styles, which have a very magazine-esque quality to them. Here are some examples pulled from the font specimen PDF:

Here are direct links to the purchase pages:

• Heldane Display
• Heldane Text

It would run you $420 to buy all styles from both families, or $225 for either respective family. You can also buy individual styles from either family for $50 each, and each font offers a few pair-bundles (regular + italic, medium + italic, and bold + italic) for $75 a pop.