The specimen for Kadenz Grotesk explores how the four styles behave in different contexts when actually used in text — from different sizes and column widths to different languages, as each language has a different distribution of letter frequency.
The specimen functions practically as a test setting for the four styles, highlighting how different circumstances not only change the way we perceive the rhythm, but also change our preference for which version we believe functions best. For example, a predominant opinion was that as the text is set smaller, the Metric version becomes preferable; or that people with different primary languages gravitate toward one version or another.
The specimen doesn’t offer an answer as to which approach is best, or in what case one should be preferred over another; rather, it invites the reader to engage with the question of rhythm and draw their own conclusions, functioning more as a palette of rhythms than a manual.
The text used is An Essay About Nothing by Yusef Lateef, the American jazz musician and theorist who wrote extensively about the question of rhythm in music. While the context is different, the text applies surprisingly well to typography, as it reflects on how to measure, analyse, and understand the period of nothingness that lies between notes in music, and between strokes in typography — and how fundamental this nothingness actually is to the experience of the listener, or, in typography, the reader.
The specimen was shown, alongside the publication containing the research and mathematical background of the project and a three-dimensional representation of the design space of rhythm, during the diploma exhibition at ECAL in Lausanne in 2026.