The Divine Comedy is well known but often regarded as complex and inaccessible, even in schools. The work has a complex linguistic structure, with constant shifts between informal and formal tones, which is not immediately apparent. The history of the first edition and the typeface used has also remained largely unexplored. The project highlights the Divine Comedy from a linguistic and typographic perspective, visually reinterpreting its multilingualism through the revival of the typeface used in the first edition.
Historical research has enabled the work to be contextualised and the original typeface to be identified; this was then digitised and updated whilst retaining its distinctive features compared to contemporary models. Eight type weights have been developed, each associated with one of the eight main linguistic registers identified in the poem. After analysing the shifts in register, these weights were applied to visually highlight linguistic variety, including through layout choices and variations in font size.