New Additions: December 2024
30th December 2024
From the hundreds of fonts we add to the Identifont database every month we chose a selection of the most interesting recent additions, and interviewed the designers about their approach to each design:
Jamie Clarke – Nave (Jamie Clarke Type)
Nave is an elegant typeface in seven weights, plus italics. What inspired you to design it?
Nave originally came about while I was studying type design at Reading University in 2013. It was always a design of contradictions. How to constrain organic curves into more conventional letter shapes, and how to suggest playfulness with elegance.
It was too ambitious for me back then so I didn’t crack it until 11 years later.
The only typeface I can find on Identifont that is at all similar to Nave is Berthold’s Galathea, designed in 1990 by Hans Heitmann. Were you influenced by this, or by any other fonts, when you designed Nave?
I looked at many, many typefaces while trying to unlock Nave’s design pattern. Galathea is beautifully drawn but I wanted to be more daring.
I was originally drawn to very fluid, hand-drawn styles like Rumba by Laura Meseguer, and Capucine by Alice Savoie, but the typeface that eventually provided the key to Nave’s structure was a big surprise even to to me: Futura Black pointed the way to how the weight could be distributed and constrained within geometric shapes.
A distinctive feature of Nave is the swirling shape of the ‘X’ and ‘x’. What inspired this feature?
Once I’d figured out the tricky weight distribution of shapes like the ‘E’ and ‘X’, it left me free to have fun with the inner curves.
I loved the idea that you could subtly twist and curl some shapes, encouraging the reader’s eye to flow around them. The swashed characters take this a step further with flicks and sweeping strokes.
Why did you choose the name Nave?
While I was searching for inspiration to solve the design puzzle, I was looking for other examples where tradition and formality are balanced with creativity and flare.
Around my studio in the valley south of Bristol there are centuries old churches dotted through the villages. Most have very utilitarian, quite formulaic, exteriors to protect them. Once you venture inside, however, they reveal intricately designed interiors with many creative flourishes.
I thought the name Nave, being the heart of the church, would serve as a fitting tribute to that duality.
André Simard – Grandheron Serif New (André Simard)
Grandheron Serif New is a companion to your sans-serif design Grandheron Sans New. What was the inspiration for it?
I have always found inspiration for designing typographic characters in nature, especially in birds. I named my first typographic family Migration Sans, because for me it was a transition, a “migration”, between the profession of graphic designer – which I practiced for more than 40 years – and the profession of letter designer. The other typographic families are all named after a bird: for example Harfang, Carouge, Corbeau, and more recently the Grandheron Sans and Grandheron Serif families. For the latter, I found my inspiration in a site where this large bird is present. It is a magical place, on the edge of a lake, where I draw the majority of my design projects.
The only fonts I can find to compare with Grandheron Serif New on Identifont are Imre Reiner’s LTC Glamour and Corvinus Skyline. Were these an influence on its design?
I didn’t know these typefaces, which are interesting by the way. Personally, what inspires me are the shapes that could stand out. When I start a new family of typographic characters, I always aim for it to be readable in small sizes and for its true personality to be discovered in large format. In my job as a designer, which I practiced for many years, I had to work with a large quantity of typefaces. When I chose a family for a concept, I looked particularly at the individual letterforms. I asked myself questions like “Does the ‘a’, ‘g’, or ‘y’ stand out in the family? Which letters have the most character or personality? How will I use them to bring out the potential of the typeface?”.
Today, I keep the same criteria when I design. I want certain letters to stand out strongly from the others while keeping a family air. Just like in a family of humans, there are different characters; it is the same reality in my families of typographic characters.
I do not find my influences in particular fonts, but rather in the big families of characters like the linear, the mechanical, or the didones.
Grandheron Serif New echoes many of the distinctive features of Grandheron Sans New, such as the flat-topped ‘a’, the discontinuous ‘x’, and the break in the ‘y’ junction, Do you aim for them to be used together, such as for headings and body text?
Indeed, that's why I designed the serif. In my mind, I saw them being used together; as much the sans for the text and the serif for the titles as vice versa. On the other hand, once the family is launched, it no longer belongs to me and even if my wish was that the two be used together and in certain situations, it is likely that my fonts will be used for other uses that I had not imagined.
As for the flat-tapped ‘a’ or ‘f’ it comes from my daughter’s handwriting. I found them interesting when I read her texts. I adapted this style to other letters like the ‘y’, ‘k’, or ‘x’. I carried these same particularities over to the serif family.
Is Grandheron Serif New an updated version of an earlier typeface, and if so, why did you decide to update it?
The original version of Grandheron Sans was first released in 2020. The main goal of the family overhaul, besides adding the serif version, was to carefully review the sans across all styles. The new iteration of the typeface features numerous refinements, including aligned vertical metrics to ensure consistency with the new serif family. However, users should note that this alignment may result in different line spacing when reformatting text originally set in the 2020 version.
Grandheron Serif New is an entirely new design, crafted as a companion to the sans styles. It also expands the typographic possibilities of the Grandheron family, offering a cohesive and flexible toolkit for design projects on any scale.
Do you have any plans to expand the Grandheron family further?
I am planning to add Canadian syllabic languages into my Grandheron family. I am also currently working on a slab-serif family. Built on the x-height of my ITC Migration Sans, it could possibly be used for text as well as large titles.
Pablo Desportes – LL Supermax (Lineto)
LL Supermax is a striking lower-case geometric typeface in three aspect ratios: tall, square, and wide. What inspired you to design it?
LL Supermax was first introduced at Lineto in 1998 and was designed by Gilles Gavillet and Cornel Windlin. In 2019, we started to look back at our catalogue to bring back old classics, and this led to the Lineto 1.0 section of our website. It seemed important to respect two key factors: first, the historical sources designed by Max Bill for three Zurich institutions: his famous Negerkunst poster (1931) created for an exhibition of prehistoric cave paintings at Kunsthaus Zürich; the Neubühl logo (1931) designed for a housing estate in Zürich; and his Wohnbedarf emblem (1932) designed for a furniture store. On the other hand the project had to be built around the first interpretation by Gilles and Cornel.
The original Lineto typeface was released with the tall version as an uppercase and the wide version as a lowercase. I split these two proportions into two separate unicase cuts. While drawing the tall and wide cuts, I soon realized they could be interpolated. This brought even more technical constraints, which improved the consistency of the overall project. Creating a variable font that transitioned between both extreme proportions wasn’t our focus, but we used the technology to define the square cut.
Although it’s constructed from geometric shapes, LL Supermax has subtle variations that prevent it from being purely mechanical, such as the different stroke widths in the ‘m’, ’n’, ‘u’, and ‘w’. What was the thinking behind these?
Looking closer at Maxi Bill's Neubühl and Wohnbedarf logos, they share the same DNA but slightly differ in proportions, contrast, and weight. In order to keep consistency across cuts and unify in a coherent drawing, we enhanced these proportion variations to stay as close as possible to both versions. The stroke contrasts help differentiate letters that share similar outlines but are simply rotated. These details also bring rhythm and subtleties, when letter shapes are built around very basic minimalistic geometric forms.
LL Supermax Tall is slightly reminiscent of the old Letraset typeface, ITC Zipper. Is that just a coincidence?
Max Bill designed the Neubühl logo in 1931 and only drew a few letters; he then used that project as a template for the Wohnbedarf emblem. The original Supermax project was inspired by these logos and later turned into a full typeface, and they don’t share any historical roots with Zipper. Of course both Zipper and Supermax are thought around the same geometric fantasy of using minimal geometric counter shapes and outlines. However, I find more connections between Zipper and LL Pirelli, first released at Lineto in 1999 as LL Asphalt drawn by Masahiro Nakamura. It was later redesigned and upgraded by Weichi He at Lineto in 2021.
Did you have any applications in mind when you designed LL Supermax?
Being obviously a very graphic typeface, it is mostly designed to be used in big sizes. Its construction is rather mathematical, and its spacing and kerning are rather tight. The project was developed to create this feeling of an instant logo. Lineto’s website serves as an excellent platform to showcase and test new fonts. Every release comes with a custom graphic specimen where we try to create the appropriate context for each typeface.
Paulo Goode – Bostin (Paulo Goode)
Bostin is a lively font with a Sixties/Seventies vibe. What inspired you to create it?
I had come to a natural break in my work schedule and decided to skim back through my sketchbook to see if there were any ideas that were worthy of completing. There were a couple of sketches that jumped out as having potential, so I decided to develop them to completion. One was obviously Bostin, the other being Clumpy. They were both frivolous/playful designs that would make an interesting contrast to my recent releases. These were created for fun and also served as a learning curve to try something a little different.
The whole 70s vibe for Bostin stemmed from my nostalgically watching re-runs of The Six Million Dollar Man that was on TV at the time I was developing the sketches. I also recalled an oft-used phrase from my childhood… “Bostin’ like Steve Austin” that would have referred to something/someone being brilliant or doing something amazing. It seemed to be a perfect fit for the name of the new font and also to inspire some bostin promotional graphics to support it.
Is it a revival of a classic font from that period, or did you originate the design?
It is an original design, but is very much influenced by Othmar Motter’s Motter Ombra from 1972. It was one of those typefaces that I recall from browsing Letraset catalogues when I first began my career as an illustrator in the 1980s. I have always had a soft spot for this gorgeously flamboyant typeface that, to me, epitomises 1970s design exploration and experimentation that was most likely inspired by the Art Nouveau movement. I love to see Motter Ombra out in the wild and what strange and peculiar uses it has been appropriated.
So, while Bostin is certainly inspired by Motter Ombra, the final result is by no means a copy. It has its own personality and I feel it would sit very comfortably alongside Motter Ombra and other psychedelic type designs from that time period.
It’s interesting that, in many cases, the shape of a character is defined not by the shape of its solid black outline, but by the hairline gap within it; for example, I’m thinking of the ‘A’, ‘C’, ‘G’, ‘c’, and ‘e’. Did you have to experiment to get the best design for each character, and were any particularly difficult?
Yes, that’s a great observation. There were many iterations of just the ‘O’ glyph before I finally settled on its shape, proportions, and most importantly, the counter. Once the counter was finalised, this became a motif for the rest of the character set – setting the style for the eye of the ‘e’, for example. The ‘A’ had the most iterations and I was experimenting right up until launch with different options on that glyph. To be honest, I am still not sure 100% about it, but I went with it mainly because the upturned version works best as a ‘V’ and, as a pair, none of the other iterations had the same flow and balance.
Bostin looks ideal for applications such as toys, greetings cards, and retro album covers; did you have any particular ones in mind?
Yes, as a display typeface, any kind of branding that seeks a retro style would be ideal to try Bostin.
Do you have any plans to extend Bostin?
In the future I may add one or two optical sizes to satisfy different use cases.