Patro typeface
Type into the plate
02 — Signs
Real and fictional plates, in the languages the streets actually used. They keep moving. Drag the row, and add one to the specimen above.
03 — Drawing
P, a, t, r and o, the letters the signs actually gave. The points sit on the outline. The handles pull the curves.
04 — Letters
158 glyphs. Click a character to copy it. The posters put a detail back on the plate.
Sign alphabet
Lowercase is in the font and follows these same drawings, so patro and PATRO set the same way.
Figures
Punctuation
More
U+0041
Click copies the character.
SCHÖNAUER STRAßE
SCHÖNAUER STRAßE
SCHÖNAUER STRAßE
SCHÖNAUER STRAßE
05 — About
Drawn from five letters.
Patro is a typeface reconstructed from the enamel street and house signs of Czechoslovakia in the late 1920s and 1930s. It began as a short school exercise. A few signs turned up, painted in a script that does not match any digitised typeface, and the only letters that could be trusted were P, a, t, r and o. The rest of the alphabet was drawn in that same hand.
The upper arms are heavier than the lower ones. That inverted shading is taken from the signs, where the paint sat thicker along the top. The ink traps are opened into small droplets, a reminder that the letters were brushed onto metal.
One style. The signs were capitals. Lowercase is in the file and follows those same drawings, so a word sets the same in either case. Slovak, Czech, German, and English. A stylistic set draws an alternate N, Q, Ň and ampersand.
Designed by Dalibor Itze in 2022, for professor Erik Faulhaber, Schrift und Typografie. Released in 2026 by Studio Asymetric under the SIL Open Font License, so the font can be used, studied, modified, and embedded. The name Patro stays with this design.
- Styles
- 1
- Version
- 1.001
- Drawn
- 2022
- Open release
- 2026
- Next
- Designer
- Dalibor Itze
- Published by
- Studio Asymetric
- Glyphs
- 158
- Encoding
- Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A
- Languages
- Slovak, Czech, German, English
- Figures
- Proportional lining
- Features
- ss01 · salt · aalt
- Webfont
- 10.9 KB, WOFF2
- Desktop
- 36.8 KB, TTF
- License
- SIL Open Font License 1.1
- Reserved name
- Patro
N Q Ň &
N Q Ň &
06 — This year
Anniversaries of the First Czechoslovak Republic
The real days Czechoslovakia was founded, kept on the calendar of this year. What is still ahead is marked Next.
07 — Download
PATRO
Free under the Open Font License. Every file includes the license and a readme.
@font-face {
font-family: "Patro";
src: url("Patro.woff2") format("woff2");
font-weight: 700;
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
}