August Roma is a luxury serif from PeachCreme, built around one idea: swashes. The base letterforms are a clean, slightly condensed high-contrast serif, but almost every character has an extended alternate with a sweeping tail, and using those well is the whole craft of setting this font.
Swashes on uppercase, lowercase, ampersand and numerals
Most swash serifs decorate the capitals and stop there. August Roma includes swash forms across uppercase and lowercase letters, the ampersand, and the numerals — the numeral swashes in particular are rare and make it genuinely useful for dates on wedding stationery and event material, where a plain figure next to a decorated capital always looks unfinished.
PeachCreme ships a PDF with step-by-step instructions for reaching the alternates through the Glyphs panel or Character Map. That is a small thing, but it solves the single most common complaint about swash fonts — buyers who install the file, see only the plain letters, and assume the alternates are missing. They are there; they are OpenType features and need to be switched on.
Files and price
The download includes OTF, TTF and WOFF. The desktop licence is listed at $23 on Creative Market, discounted to $19.55 at the time of writing. August Roma is sold as part of a font duo, so check the product page for what the current bundle includes before buying — the pairing is designed to work together and buying the duo is usually better value than buying the serif alone.
How to use the swashes without overdoing it
The usual mistake is turning on every alternate at once, which produces a tangle of crossing tails. The convention that works: one swash at the start of a line and one at the end, plain forms everywhere in between. Never set a swash capital next to another swash capital, and never use swash forms in all-caps settings — the tails are drawn to flow into lowercase and will collide. Give the line extra leading too; the descending tails need vertical room that default line spacing does not provide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is August Roma font free to download?
No. August Roma is a commercial serif from PeachCreme and there is no free version. The desktop licence is listed at $23 on Creative Market, discounted to $19.55 at the time of writing.
Does August Roma include swashes for numbers?
Yes. Swash alternates cover uppercase and lowercase letters, the ampersand and the numerals. Numeral swashes are uncommon in this category and make the font particularly suited to dates on wedding and event stationery.
How do I access August Roma’s alternate characters?
Through the Glyphs panel in OpenType-aware software such as Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity, or via the Character Map. PeachCreme includes a PDF with step-by-step instructions in the download, since the alternates are not visible by default.
