Aelyn - Influence or plagiarism?

Fiz de la Peña

Hello everyone,

Lately I keep noticing a trend in which fonts seem to be slightly tweaked and sold as originals.

Take Aelyn. I am writing this message because I would like to know which is the typeface upon which Aelyn is based. I used to have the name and a sample of the "orignal" font in my PC, but, sadly, that file seems to have been erased.

Could anyone please tell me which is the name of the typeface Aelyn takes its cues from?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks for your kindness and help.

Ray Larabie

I don't think you can trace that style to a specific typeface. It's part of a larger mid-2010's to now display type trend but I don't know if it has an accepted name. It seems to be a mix of Art Nouveau curves/Art Deco letterforms and delicate lines. There's a neo-psychedelic aspect to it and often some apparent use of the Illustrator warp tool. If you look at Creative Market you can find hundreds of fonts in this style. I think it's a reaction to the geometric sans and experimental sans trend of the late 2000's to mid 2010's. In my mind, I call it 2010's Fashion Nouveau.

John Savard

I know I have never seen a typeface so closely resembling Aelyn for me to think of it as a ripoff. However, if one ignores the fact that the bottoms of the v and w are rounded, I know I did see a typeface, the name of which I don't remember, which was very similar to it in stroke width and serif style. Of course, matching only those elements would not put it into rip-off territory.

As one example, after finding Americana as the closest thing to it, and not very close, in old materials about type, Identifont led me to Aequitas, which is a closer match, although, again, not nearly close enough for a question of plagiarism to apply.

Fiz de la Peña

Thanks for your answers and help.

Ali Riza Esin

This is something like a subject to a golden rush, nowadays, I guess. Something I’ve really wondered too, hoping to find an answer. I’ve even thought to start a new topic about it, then I found this. I’m not in search about if it’s ‘influence or plagiarism’ or not, but well… It's not for me to talk about it (also an oxymoron, sorry).

Matthew Smith

Perhaps related to Ali’s latest response, this all reminded me of the “Twin Films” thread on twitter: https://twitter.com/leesteffen/status/1645547828180033538?s=20

I definitely suspect a similar phenomenon happens within the type industry where several designers or foundries are “racing” to release a font of a similar genre. We are all reacting to and influenced by the design industry at large, whether conscious of it or not, so I’m never particularly surprised by seeing people land on similar solutions.