Cardenio is the infamous lost play by Shakespeare. The name of the font kind of came about as a word play on something classic that I felt was missing from the (free) font landscape, while at the same time being a modern addition to a world of Instagram, Facebook and co.
Cardenio Modern was created because I needed a vertically oriented handdrawn, all-capitals font that looked classy. It needed to look good on top of photos, yet be humble enough to not steal the show. After forty minutes sketching in bed one night, the first draft was created. Six months later, the font was finished. I added a Boldface a year later.
In all honesty, compared to professional fonts filling the same niche (the wonderful Populaire comes to mind) this is an amateurish piece of work. It still has lots of rough edges and only limited international support. But it captured the imagination when it was released in 2013 and has featured in lots of ads from Fiat to IKEA.
Cardenio Modern is available from dafont.com.
Cardenio Modern Regular works best at small sizes. Use it in quotes, on cards or as subtitles and credits for your film project. Naturally, it works very well with its bold large sister. Cardenio Modern Bold should be used to emphasize and highlight words in your text. But it works very well as a display typeface too. Use it on posters, advertisements, menus or product labels. If you are a designer and would like to use Cardenio Modern, make sure to explore how both weights complement each other.
Cardenio Modern is free for personal and commercial use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Be aware that I ask to be attributed as the author if you decide to use it. Should that be impractical, feel free to send me an e-mail and we'll work something out.
