Decutto is a neo-grotesque that packs the Marionette formula and some blackletter ideas into a low-contrast sans serif design. The typeface has TDC Certificate of Typographic Excellence. Its name plays on the phrases “off cut” and “cut to,” which express its key feature – the contemporary legible letter shape is decorated with straight carved edges and counters, giving the typeface a crisp and simplistic look, like that of an old minted coin.

The letter shape has pronounced features of William Dwiggins’ M-formula, which makes the overall texture sharper and creates some visual contrast between the rounded outer black shape and the squared inner white counter shape. This simplification makes the text clear and sharp at a small body size and somewhat mannered at a heading size. The typeface also received some features of blackletter, such as diagonal calligraphic strokes in uppercase letters, a subtle triangular serif in the upper left corner of lowercase letters, and thickening at the end of ascenders and descenders.

Styles: Light, Regular, Medium, Bold.
Scripts: Extended Latin, European & Asian Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Georgian.
Languages: 500+. List of supported languages: https://michaelrafailyk.com/decutto
Kerning: 1998 class-to-class pairs.
Hinting: Manual PostScript.
Format: OTF – OpenType with PostScript outlines.
Glyph Composition/Decomposition (Diacritics): Extended Latin and basic Vietnamese diacritic sets (562 characters). Precomposed.
Mark Positioning: Diacritical marks positioned for Extended Latin and Hebrew characters.

The promo images use a woodcut illustration from the Dance of Death series by Hans Holbein the Younger, as well as elements from English medieval minted coins.

The typeface was designed by Michael Rafailyk in 2023 and significantly refined in 2024.