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What could have happened if Roger Excoffon & Eric Gill gathered in Marcel Olive’s backyard in Marseille to share a few Pastis together back in the days? In some way, Marsel could be the surprising result of this hypothetical weird experiment.

It started out in 2016 as a single “Black” cut, mostly intended for display: a colorful fat sans with uncanny high contrasts and utter personality. While flirting with the strangeness of Gill’s Kayo, Marsel primarily began as a distant homage to Excoffon’s mythical Antique Olive Nord, a reminiscence of a Latin taste for exuberance.

In 2019, I decided to push things in another direction and explore a quieter, more rational counterpart to Marsel Black. I went ahead and designed a very sober and straightforward Thin version, which opened the door for new Marsel family members to come: an incongruous mix of the two approaches. The family’s main particularity lies in the distribution of thin and thick strokes, especially at junctions. Across weights, this balance grows increasingly odd, as Marsel subtly shifts from a monoline sans serif to a contrasted one
—from the notorious British sense of politeness, manners and discretion to the invasive and colorful exhortations of a Provençal fisherman.

Cheerful but steady, daring but finely chiseled, Marsel comes in a broad range of weights and now as a variable font, allowing smooth transitions across the spectrum, with a complete set of contemporary OpenType features, ligatures, figures and alternative forms to suit every contemporary need, from quiet voice to bold statement.