“Raw and unapologetically seductive” – meet ALT.tf’s femme fatale display typeface, ALT Erogenous

The brainchild of Type01’s founder and director Amber Weaver, ALT.tf is the official foundry of what was once known as the Femme Type initiative: a media platform and book on a mission to champion women in type design. A project that Amber ran over the course of a few years that had resulted in the discovery of “many talented femmes in the space who simply needed more recognition in a male-dominated industry”, she shares, this chapter quite naturally led on to a new one in 2022 when the designer made the decision to open the doors to ALT.tf, a foundry focused on addressing a very longstanding gap in the type design industry: “The lack of diverse voices shaping the fonts designers rely on every day.”

With more than gender disparity alone to tackle, Amber decided that “instead of waiting for the (inaccessible for many) system to churn out type designers”, she was going to put her resources into working directly with type designers from underrepresented groups in order to produce fonts that “directly diluted the pool of fonts available for the design industry to work with”.

Now with nine releases under its belt from a catalogue of close collaborations with designers from underrepresented backgrounds in the industry, ALT.tf dropped a new display typeface, ALT Erogenous, at the tail end of 2025. Designed by Taiwanese type designer Eunice Su, this particular collaboration brought something quite new to the foundry’s catalogue in the form of a bold, unapologetic letterset that channels “a sort of dangerous femininity, that isn’t gentle but very raw and unapologetically seductive”, says Amber.

The typeface’s sharp edges and seductive curves were first inspired by the cover of a book published in the late 70s: Combat in the Erogenous Zone by Ingrid Bengis. “As a book that explores the complexities of female identity, freedom, and emotional duality,” designer Eunice shares, “the cover’s original lettering conveyed a tension and expressiveness that resonated with me deeply, shaping the typeface’s design.” By using the original title as a springboard for a typographic revival of sorts, Eunice shaped a display serif that aimed to “embody the contradictions of femininity, balancing strength with vulnerability and resilience with openness,” she shares.

Expressing these layered themes in a tight typographic system, Eunice’s Erogenous came to life in an expertly art directed campaign led by Amber and ALT.tf’s creative director and graphic designer Giulia Boggio that leaned into the typeface’s seductive side. “I have many art direction ideas in the form of moodboards hidden on our Pinterest page just waiting for the opportunity to be explored and paired with the right typeface,” Amber shares – one folder being a collection of visual inspiration around the theme of “Sex & Sin” she says. It’s safe to say that a few pins came in pretty useful when the team were developing their ideas for an ALT Erogenous shoot.

The campaign’s strong and sultry images of everything from dripping fruit to fingerprint identification records (shot by Lindsay Ellary), emphasise the typeface’s expressive tensions while making the case for its decorative and flexible potential in headlines, logos, and editorial settings – it’s immediately attention grabbing. The detail that builds up a unique narrative and visual world around a typeface like Erogenous is an opportunity that ALT.tf is finding in each new collaboration, putting its emphasis on fully fledged campaigns that build a real relationship between type directions and visuals. After all, “type isn’t just functional,” Amber ends, “when mixed with equally strong, beautifully art directed images, you can get truly stunning results.”