Cover Font Headaches

I commission custom art for the IT Mastery books, but do the text layout myself. Most often, I use the Minion Pro for the body font and Myriad Pro for the display font. They’re staid, reliable, and unremarkable. On rare occasion, the topic demands a particular font. That’s straightforward; I must distort the design until the font fits. When a book requires a specific kind of font, but not a single font, things get hard. The cover for OpenZFS Mastery is an old Mediterraniean vase. It needs a font that looks like it’s from the Roman Empire or ancient Greece. There’s lots of fonts for that, no? Yes. Hundreds of fonts. Each promising candidate needs a test cover. Here’s some of what I’ve run through trying to find one that works. Baselius font This is a nifty font. I like the central line. The title doesn’t really stand out, though. Next candidate. Elektra font The title stands out better, but looks kind of… janky? Maybe a different approach. Romanicum font That flows too well. It looks…