Halberd Display was drawn over twenty-six months in our Brooklyn studio. The brief came in late 2023 — an art director at a fashion magazine wanted a didone with edge, something that looked like it had been cut from sheet steel rather than drawn by hand. We sketched eleven Hs before any of them felt right, each version a slight retreat from the geometric Bodoni and a slight advance toward something cooler.

The defining gesture is the cut-edge serif. Where most didones taper to a hair, Halberd terminates with a small but unmistakably geometric beak. At display sizes the beak reads almost like a pen-stroke; at sub-headline sizes it gives the letterforms a confident foothold without the icy formality of a strict modern. We tested it on covers, on chapter openers, on stamped leather — it held in every register.

Italics arrived late in the process. We initially tried an oblique, then a true italic with cursive entry strokes; neither felt right against the geometric uprights. The released italic is a hybrid: roman proportions, italic g and a, oblique stress, with a few showy alternates kept tucked behind a stylistic set. Pull them out for chapter openers, leave them off for body. Halberd is, above all, a confident magazine face.