New Additions: April 2025
30th April 2025
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:
Patrycja Walczak – Poltik (TypeTogether)
You’ve written that the design of Poltik began with numerals on a 1970s clock (see Interview with Patrycja Walczak). How did you go from that inspiration to developing a complete typeface family?
The process of transforming those inspiring numerals into a family of six weights plus italics required a lot of work but it was surprisingly smooth. I came across the clock in my grandfather’s drawer, and something about the numerals sparked an emotion I couldn’t quite name at first. They felt joyful, funky, bold, a little wild, and full of quirky design decisions; a bit of the industrial nostalgia of the past era and a pinch of the post-Soviet blocky shapes that were a part of the Polish landscape (my home country). Or at least, that’s how I interpreted them.
With a background in graphic design, my initial thought was to use these shapes in branding, posters, or packaging projects; but there were no letters, just numbers. So, when the new university semester began I brought the idea to the Typography studio and started working on an alphabet that would hopefully evoke the same feeling. Once I had a working display version, I submitted it to the Gerard Unger Scholarship. After winning, I began developing the text version. The scholarship and mentorship allowed me to continue the project over the next two years, expanding the display style, refining it, and building a functional text version with matching italics.
Was it difficult to create a whole character set from just ten numerals, and did you refer to other typefaces from the same period for inspiration?
Yes, creating a full alphabet from just ten numerals was quite a challenge. I started by building a grid and trying to stick to a consistent system, but I quickly got stuck. To get out of that rut I looked elsewhere for inspiration; mostly to the Polish School of Poster. The bold, colorful posters from the 1960s to the 1990s gave me permission to loosen up and focus less on perfect geometry and more on preserving the overall mood and personality of the design.
I also received essential advice from Professor Krzysztof Kochnowicz and Viktoriya Grabowska. They encouraged me to focus on the number 7, which stood out from the rest but played a crucial role in shaping the typeface’s unique character. That insight gave me a new perspective – and more freedom – to explore other shapes with a sense of play and discovery.
In the weights from Light to Extra Bold the use of reverse contrast is quite subtle. But in Poltik Display (and its italic) the dial is turned up to eleven! Was Poltik Display the starting point, and did you then tone it down for the other styles?
Yes, Poltik Display was definitely the starting point. When I submitted the design to the scholarship there was no text version yet. Veronika and José from TypeTogether suggested developing one since, as striking as the display style was, it wasn’t very legible at small sizes. They believed in the potential of the project and invested a lot of time and care into guiding me. I’m incredibly grateful for their support: for the feedback, the questions, the honest conversations, and the way they respected my ideas while challenging me to think deeper.
The text version isn’t a direct twin of the display version; it leans more into the joyful, accessible spirit of the project. It’s a reliable reversed contrast sans-serif, but with a wink; subtle quirks that reward a closer look. I definitely toned it down and steered it in a slightly different direction.
In Poltik Display I love how the bowls of many letters are detached from their vertical strokes, such as in the ‘U’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘m’, and ‘p’. This isn’t a feature of any of the original numerals, so what inspired that idea?
That choice came from my “keep the vibe, but not at all costs” approach. I knew the letters needed strong visual contrast to feel consistent with the original numerals. But rather than rigidly applying contrast to the horizontals, I wanted the verticals to have a voice too. To keep everything speaking the same visual language, I introduced these breaks between the bowls and stems. They added a new layer of contrast and visual rhythm to the text while staying true to the overall mood. I think of it as a kind of distilled and twisted version of the original idea; refined but still expressive.
Looking back, do you find it surprising how the numerals on a clock started you on this creative journey?
One of the nicest parts of this story is how randomly the inspiration appeared: just a clock I stumbled upon while looking for something else in my grandfather’s drawer. It came out of the blue, but it triggered that deep emotional response we sometimes get from old family keepsakes or sentimental gadgets. That quiet sense of belonging. As creatives, we process those moments by making things.
For me, the process of taking that tiny spark of inspiration and running with it felt like falling down a rabbit hole, but in the best way. I followed my curiosity and it became a beautiful, unexpected creative journey. Sometimes I think I could have just placed that clock on my shelf and forgotten about it. But there’s real power in carrying creative ideas further than expected. I had no idea that this project would lead to such a meaningful opportunity, or to become part of the TypeTogether team.
Of course, it took a lot of work and dedication. But I think there’s something sacred about not abandoning your creative projects, especially when you’re still a student. There’s a kind of naive bravery that comes with being new in the field. I think it’s worth protecting.
Jakob Runge – Gregory Poster (TypeMates)
How did the design of Gregory Poster come about? Was it for a particular project?
Creative expression is all about counter proposals. Gregory’s vintage and quirky shapes are the antithesis of the comfort zone of constructed sans serifs that I've been working on for the past few years.
Planned as a simple poster font with reduced language support and a clear spectrum of styles, Gregory Poster could have been a no-brainer. However, I couldn't resist asking how the design might look like in a different alphabet. So eventually Gregory Poster went from minimal language support to extensive language support.
Gregory Poster is reminiscent of wood type fonts, such as the 1990 Adobe digital revival Juniper. Were these an influence on its design?
To be honest, I hadn't noticed Juniper in particular, but the fluid, sculpted style fits well with Gregory Poster. I was inspired by the extreme stress-axis in Trooper Roman's ‘o’ and how David Jonathan Ross reinterpreted classics like De Vinne for his Roslindale.
Gregory Poster Italic has an unusually steep slant of about 18°; for comparison, Times Italic is 15° and Helvetica Oblique is 12°. What was the thinking behind this?
Gregory Poster is a typeface that doesn’t really have a strong systematic structure: there are rules and there are surprises. It’s all about ‘stop making sense’ and being flamboyant in every detail. The 18° angle in the italics? You can call it dramatic, but hey, it’s a poster typeface with italics designed for super-strong emphasis.
Gregory Poster’s condensed design makes it ideal for headings in a narrow text width, such as on book jackets. Is this the type of application you had in mind?
The design process was hardly characterised by functional requirements or application environments. It was all about playing around with shapes and contrasts. I had to let go of the idea of type as a tool this time. That’s why I didn't have any specific application in mind while designing, except that it would fit well with enthusiastic design … and book jackets, now that you have pointed that out.
Do you have any plans to extend Gregory Poster into a larger family?
Yes, there is more to come. By balancing the playful qualities in the geometric construction, Gregory Grotesk, planned for June 2025 will share their atmosphere of being different, yet cheerful and smiling, without matching the Poster family too closely. And the final chapter of the series will be a charming slab for text sizes: Gregory Text planned for an early 2026 release. Stay tuned!
Dušan Jelesijević – Nuvola (Tour De Force)
Nuvola is a sans-serif typeface in six weights with italics. What inspired you to design it?
I wanted to create a contrasted sans-serif typeface. At first I had Optima in mind, but pretty soon the design process took me in another direction. To my eyes, Nuvola is a compact typeface with a decent dose of details; a typeface with its own character.
Many of the strokes are more calligraphic than geometric, giving Nuvola a hand-drawn look. Did you draft some of the characters with ink on paper to achieve this?
Yes, I sketched a couple of letters with pen on paper, but not with ink and nib or brush as I'm not so good at calligraphy. Actually, I can't remember when I did classical calligraphy. What's interesting is that if I compare early sketches with the final typefaces, they usually differ a lot. But sketching helps to generate ideas, and provokes and pushes you to take further steps in the design process.
In many of the lower-case characters the curved strokes are tapered where they meet the stem, which gives the illusion of a gap, almost like a stencil font; examples are the ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘m’, ’n’, ‘p’, and ‘q’. What was the thinking behind this?
I was aiming to add some dynamics and contrast into the letter designs by minimising the join between stems in those letters. And that rhythm was applied across the whole typeface.
Did you have any particular applications in mind when you designed Nuvola?
Well, nothing specific; I just wanted it to be suitable for any situation where a classical geometric sans serif could be used. I'm aware that this type of sans-serif font is less popular than geometric sans serifs, but I try to avoid being influenced by market trends.
Julie Green – Aghast (Up Up Creative)
What led you to design Aghast? Was it for a particular project?
Aghast wasn’t designed for a specific client or commission. Instead, it started as a little design prompt I gave myself, like a fake creative brief. I imagined a typeface that could someday land on the cover of a mainstream novel. That set the tone: it needed to be eye-catching but highly legible, with enough personality to stand out in a crowded bookstore or digital thumbnail.
When I’m not sure which direction to go with a new font, I’ll often invent a pretend use case just like that. It gives me structure without constraint, and it helps me create something not just beautiful, but useful. Aghast grew out of that exercise.
An unusual feature of Aghast is the upward sloping bars on many of the capital letters, such as the ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘H’, ‘P’, and ‘R’. What inspired this aspect of the design?
Funny enough, those slanted bars weren’t part of Aghast’s original design. They actually came out of the ligature work I was doing later in the process. Creating ligatures is one of the most creative and playful parts of my work, and it was as I was working on finding fun ways to connect letters that I started to see these slanting lines repeating throughout.
As I played with and tested my ligatures, though, I didn’t love how everything looked when some ligatures had, say, a 15% slant and others were more like 30% or whatever. As I started to work on making the degree of slant uniform across the ligatures, I started to see the huge potential for really leaning into those slanted lines across the entire font. Because Aghast started as a clean, minimal sans serif, I knew I wanted to layer in some unexpected details to give it personality, and these slanting bars were definitely the answer.
At first, the slanted-bar letters were just going to live inside an alternate stylistic set, but they quickly stole the spotlight. I realized they weren’t just an interesting add-on; they were the main event. So I flipped the plan: the slanted versions became the default, and the more conventional forms moved into the stylistic set.
Aghast includes several capital letter ligatures that you can select by enabling OpenType discretionary ligatures. What sort of applications did you have in mind for these?
Before I started designing fonts full time, I was a graphic designer using them in real-world projects. So I’m a huge fan of OpenType features; I know how powerful and fun they can be when your software supports them.
The discretionary ligatures in Aghast are designed to add a little extra visual flair to things like book covers, logos, editorial layouts, and other projects where a designer might want just a touch of personality without overwhelming the overall design. They’re there to spark joy, basically, and also to make the font more useful.
If you’re using professional design tools like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, or Photoshop, or even Affinity Designer or CorelDRAW, you’ll get the full OpenType experience and can toggle those ligatures on to see them in action.
You offer many of your fonts both in standard OpenType versions and in a format called PUA that I haven't encountered before; what is it intended for, and what are the differences?
Great question! Not all software supports OpenType features like character variants and stylistic sets, so I also always offer a PUA-encoded version of every font I design. PUA encoding just means that all of the OpenType characters are assigned special codes so you can access them manually, even in programs that don’t support OpenType, like Canva, Cricut, or Microsoft Word. Basically, while I’m always thinking like a designer when I create my fonts, I still want to make sure that people without professional design software can use every single character.
If your design software does support OpenType (like Adobe or Affinity products), I recommend sticking with the regular version; it’ll give you the cleanest experience. But if you’re using software that doesn’t, the PUA version ensures you still get all the good stuff.
I explain it in more detail in this blog post: What’s a PUA-Encoded Font and When Might I Need It?