JY&A Fonts, founded by Jack Yan in 1987, has announced a new, classically inspired typeface family, JY Alia.

The New Zealand-based foundry was the first to branch into digital type in its country, and has spent the last several years working on private commissions. JY Alia marks its return to releasing retail fonts.

Initially in four variants only, with extra weights, more complex OpenType versions and a second subfamily to emerge in 2009, JY Alia is described by its designer, Jack Yan, as a workhorse serif typeface, based on an aldine model.

It is meant to complement his 1994–5 release, JY Ætna, which was based around the original Bembo design. JY Ætna was a successful family for the foundry and helped establish its reputation as a source of dependable, traditional designs.

"The problem with JY Ætna was that it wasn’t robust enough for text usage," says Mr Yan.

He sees JY Alia, which is stronger but still approachable as a design, as a rival for other workhorse typeface families such as Adobe Garamond or Monotype Bembo.

In technical aspects, JY Alia has between 3,200 and 3,300 kerning pairs and a full complement of eastern European and extended Latin characters in its OpenType and TrueType versions.

JY Alia is available for licensing at MyFonts.com now.