Klim drew Epicene around a question most display serifs avoid: what happens when you take the drama of baroque type and refuse to smooth it out? The answer is knife-edge terminals and hairlines thin enough to vanish at small sizes, which is exactly why it belongs at large ones. It's the one to spend time with this month, though it's a close call.

Alongside it: Canela from Commercial Type, PP Mori from Pangram Pangram, and ABC Prophet from Dinamo, a display serif sharp enough that the headline becomes the graphic.

Epicene is baroque in the strict sense. Razor-thin hairlines sit against heavy, sculptural drops, and the terminals come to a knife edge rather than a polite bracket. Most Didones keep their contrast under control. Epicene lets it run, which is why it stops looking like a font and starts looking like custom lettering once you set it big with tight line-height.

Why we like it

Bodoni and Didot have been the default answer to "make it look expensive" for so long that they've stopped meaning anything. Epicene carries the same historic weight but keeps the hand-carved tension the standard Didones sanded off. It refuses to sit in the background, so the rest of the layout can do almost nothing.

Best for: High-fashion editorial · Niche luxury packaging · Gallery identities · Campaign headlines that need to stop a scroll

Canela sits in the narrow gap between a classical serif and a humanist sans, and it has never agreed to be either. The serifs are gone, but the flares and calligraphic stress of stone-cut lettering stay. The result has the calm of a serif and the openness of a sans, which gives a page a quiet, expensive weight without reaching for a bold cut.

Why we like it

Optima tried something similar in 1958 and now reads like a spa brochure. Canela gets the same sculptural warmth without the period baggage. It's one of the few typefaces that makes a minimal layout feel considered rather than empty.

Best for: Boutique hospitality · Skincare packaging · Architecture monographs · Any brief asking for "luxury, but quiet"

PP Mori is a neo-grotesque built to fix the coldness that comes with most Swiss grotesques. The counters are open, the stroke rhythm has a slight pulse, and the terminals are cut with enough character that you notice them in a heading. At text sizes it stays comfortable across long passages, and in the heavy weights it anchors a digital grid without much help.

Why we like it

Inter and SF Pro are what you get when nobody made a decision. They work, and they look like everything else. Mori does the same functional job with an editorial finish, which matters when a product interface is also doing brand work.

Best for: Digital product design · Consumer tech interfaces · Contemporary magazine layouts · Identity systems that have to scale

Prophet is a display serif built on sharp diagonals and chiseled angles, and Dinamo has cut them with digital precision rather than leaving them rough. Every joint looks sliced through, which gives a headline a physical presence most display serifs try to fake with ornament. Set it large and the geometry becomes the graphic.

Why we like it

Ogg and its cousins are on every agency portfolio site right now, which makes them a risky pick for anyone trying to look like themselves. Prophet has a harder, more brutalist edge, and it asks for almost nothing in the background.

Best for: Streetwear lookbooks · Poster series · Music festival identities · Web editorials that want to provoke.

Put the four side by side and they disagree about almost everything. Epicene wants all the contrast it can get, Canela wants almost none, Mori wants to disappear into a system and Prophet wants to be the only thing on the page. What they share is that each one made a decision and stuck to it. That's the part a template can't copy, and it's why the layout around any of them can afford to do so little.