CASE STUDY
Uncial Antiqua
TYPE DESIGN & WEB / 2025
A specimen site for a revived majuscule script — the ancestor of Latin blackletter, rebuilt for modern screens.
ROLE
Concept, UX/UI,
visual design
BRIEF
Type specimen site
TYPEFACE
Uncial Antiqua
Astigmatic, 2011
FORMAT
Desktop + mobile,
scroll-driven
LICENSE
SIL Open Font License
free to use
01 / THE SUBJECT
A letterform older than
the lowercase alphabet
Uncial is a pure majuscule script used by Latin and Greek scribes from the 3rd to the 8th century AD — no distinction between upper and lowercase, because lowercase did not exist yet. Its name comes from the Latin uncus: curve, hook.
Uncial Antiqua is a hybrid revival that folds the faster Half-Uncial hand into the formal Uncial one. The signature letterforms survive intact, and — unexpectedly — so does readability at text size.
02 / THE APPROACH
A museum object
and a live tool
A
Ancient DNA, modern screen
The page sets manuscript history against a browser viewport — rotated, diagonal type that behaves like a page being turned rather than a block being scrolled.
B
Direct Hit
A labelled mechanical drawing of a catapult — bucket, arm, restraining rope, cantilever spring — borrowed as an engineering plate. The letterform treated as a machine with parts.
C
Type it yourself
A live tester with a size control, defaulting to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a text this script would once have been used to copy by hand.
D
The whole set, in the open
Full uppercase, lowercase, numerals, punctuation and diacritics laid out plainly, so the face can be judged rather than admired.
03 / IN USE
A dead hand, still working
3.10M
requests served by Google Fonts
in a single week
57,300+
live websites currently
setting the face
3rd–8th c.
the centuries the original
hand was in daily use
SELECTED SCREENS
IN CONTEXT — DESKTOP & MOBILE
© 2026 Benaya Amar.
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