HTF Didot was commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar magazine in 1991 as part of an overall redesign. Editor-in-chief Liz Tilberis and art director Fabien Baron envisioned a typeface based on the historical revivalism of the magazine’s style of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, under legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch. HTF Didot is an adaptation of the work of the revered eighteenth and nineteenth-century Parisian typographer Firmin Didot, redesigned for contemporary publication. The font's very vertical letterforms feature extremes of thickness and thinness and have thin, long, horizontal serifs. HTF Didot is generally used for headlines and display text; at small sizes the reader's eye is only drawn to the thick lines, while the thin parts of the letters disappear.
Gallery label from Standard Deviations, 2011.