ITC Black Tulip was designed by Dudley Rees and inspired by the modular simplicity of the Greek fret band, an ancient repeating pattern formed by tracing a line at right angles between two horizontal rules to form an interlocking motif. Rees admired the discipline of the motif, "I saw how that simple rigid rectangular network suggested an alphabet that would need little or no kerning," he says. He describes ITC Black Tulip as a "dramatic headline face".