Typefaces and fonts aren't something you usually notice when you're reading a book or magazine. If you do, it's probably because it's really good or because it's really, really bad (consider poor old Comic Sans). When it came to choosing the font for our books, we wanted something which was easy to read and held subtle references to the typography design from the first half of the twentieth century; the period in which our artists were working. And of course, we also wanted to choose fonts which had been designed by women.
The Modern Women Artists typeface is set in Hesse Antiqua. Designed by Gundrun Zapf-von Hesse in 1946, the typeface was digitised in 2018 by Monotype to mark the 100th birthday of this remarkable typographer. A former bookbinder and punch-cutter for the Bauer foundry in Munich, Zapf-von Hesse was one of the few women working in this field at the time. The Hesse Antiqua typeface was created from detailed research into her original metal punches. You can read the full story here.
The body text in the Modern Women Artists series (and on this website) is set in Lelo, designed by Katharina Köhler for Camelot. This contemporary font references early twentieth century sans serif typefaces such as Futura but with a modern feel.
To discover more fonts designed by women, the typequality platform is a good place to start.