Wedge draws text faces for small sizes and cheap paper. The house rule is a threshold, not a taste: a trap is cut wherever two strokes meet at less than fifty degrees, and nowhere else. That single number decides what the mark looks like, which is the right way round: most ink-trap work draws a shape it likes and invents the engineering afterwards.
The mark is a W drawn on a five point centreline at a 34 unit stroke. Its three inner junctions come out at 41, 47 and 41 degrees, so all three are cut. No other letter in the alphabet gives the rule three chances to act at once.
The mark, and the two reductions it is allowed
The threshold is the system, so it has to be visible. Raise or drop the middle vertex: the junction angles are recomputed from the centreline, and a trap exists only while its angle is under fifty degrees. Nothing here is drawn by hand.
apex y = 70
3 of 3 junctions cut
The rule running · threshold fixed at 50 degrees
A foundry palette is a printing palette. Two neutrals that behave like stock and ink, one cold accent for data, and vermilion reserved entirely for the cut.
#F4F2ED#17171B#C6360C#2F4858Four inks · vermilion never means emphasis
Archivo, from 62 to 125 on the width axis. A foundry that owns a variable family and then sets everything at one width is advertising that it does not understand its own product.
Cut where it closes
Cut where it closes
Wedge
Every face we draw is tested at six point on uncoated stock before it is tested anywhere else. If it holds there it will hold on a screen; the reverse has never once been true, and a foundry that tests on a display first is designing for the easiest case it will ever meet.
Width carries hierarchy · weight is left at 800 throughout
Five pieces. The mark appears at full size on two of them and closed on the others, which is the size rule doing its job rather than being described.
Hamburgefonstiv
Six point,
and no bigger
Wedge · ReadingFree
Ledger Text, six styles
Set at six point on uncoated stock, the traps are gone by the second impression and the joints stay open. Set at sixty they are the only thing anybody mentions.
A foundry sells a measurement. The writing says what was measured and at what size, and never describes a face as though it had a personality.
Drawn for six point on uncoated stock. Three traps, cut at the joints that close first.
A characterful grotesque with real warmth and personality.
Traps close below 24 mm. Use the closed cut.
The logo has a small and a large version, use your judgement.
Junction at 41 degrees, so it is cut.
We added a notch here to balance the letter.
It failed at six point, so we redrew the joint.
It looks great big, so we shipped it.
This style is copied more than it is understood, because the cuts are the visible part and the threshold is not. Four ways it goes, and the first is the one that ends it.
Wedge is invented, built as a portfolio exercise in the ink trap revival. Reading, Kings Meadow and the printing conditions described are real; this foundry, its faces, staff, part numbers and prices are not. The approach is after Matthew Carter’s Bell Centennial of 1978 and Tobias Frere-Jones’ Retina of 2016, and the revival of the look from about 2026. Those designers are credited as influences only. Part of the One Rule Each series.
A trap is cut wherever two strokes meet at less than fifty degrees, measured at the centreline, and nowhere else. Below 24 mm the traps are removed rather than scaled.