New Additions: November 2024
30th November 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:
Neil Summerour – Boom Sans (Positype)
Where did the idea for Boom Sans originate? Did you design it for a particular project?
Well… the answer to this isn’t particularly poignant or dramatic – it started as a doodle. I downplay that a bit, but that’s typically how all type designs begin for me: a quick sketch, a doodle during a Zoom call, or a curiosity to see if I can draw something with a specific feel or within certain constraints.
In the case of Boom, I was curious if I could draw a very dense, very wide ‘a’ that didn’t adhere to typical grotesque or neo-grotesque solutions. I wanted it flat, wide, open, and – as I’ve said before – dense. This departure from the usual grotesque conventions wasn’t intended as a critique, but rather an expression of fatigue. I was tired of seeing the same approaches and wondered if I could create something a bit different.
After solving that one letter, I mumbled under my breath “BOOM”, chuckled, and decided that would be the perfect name.
One distinctive feature of Boom Sans is its unusually tight letter spacing. Why did you decide on this aspect of its design?
Drama. I’m being a little silly, but there’s some truth to that. Many of the typefaces I create lean beyond conventional text applications, with a strong focus on display and visual narrative. This usually means I keep my character spacing intentionally tight.
My belief is that it’s easier for a user to add spacing than to remove it. With Boom, I concentrated on achieving very tight relationships between letterforms.
That said, given the mass expressed in the heavier weights, finding that sweet spot where tight spacing works harmoniously with the letterforms’ dense apertures became an exercise in rhythm. Looser spacing would disrupt that rhythm.
Boom Sans provides a wide range of eight weights, from Thin to Super, and even the boldest weights manage to retain the essential character of the family. Did you have to consider the extreme bold weights when first designing the letterforms?
Yes, and thanks for noticing! I started with the heavier weights because they carry the most distinctive aspects of what I envisioned for Boom. From there, I worked down to the lighter weights, ensuring that the lightest exemplars still echoed and accentuated the traits of the heaviest ones.
From there, I gave equal attention to maintaining balance across widths, ensuring the design retained its core character and familiarity across the entire family.
The italic of Boom Sans is not just an optically slanted version of the regular, but includes script-style letterforms; for example, the ’a’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’, and ‘q’. Why did you decide on this?
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to avoid the usual trappings of heavy grotesques. This led me to consider more humanist influences for the italics. Each decision to lean into a more humanist, hand-drawn aesthetic became intentional and avoided the typical slant-and-go approach wherever possible.
Even the shoulders and contact points were adjusted for a more natural, optically pleasing feel. I wanted the eye to naturally dance along the x-height. Given the tighter spacing overall, it was important to retain legibility, especially with the excessive mass and widths available in the family.
Keith Bates – Empire Diner (K-Type)
Empire Diner is a display typeface with an Art Deco style. What was the inspiration for it?
The typeface was inspired by trips to New York; the Empire Diner is a restaurant on 10th Avenue in the Chelsea district. The diner has been closed and re-opened several times but the wonderfully distinctive signage always stood out, so the idea of creating a complete character set took hold.
The diner dates from the 1940s but closed down in the 1970s. It was purchased and stylishly renovated in 1976 by new owners, one of whom was Carl Laanes, the Head of the Graphics Department at the Museum of Modern Art. Although neither the restaurant nor MoMA could confirm that Carl Laanes designed the Art Deco triline signage, I think it's very likely he did.
The closest similar font I can find is Broadway Engraved. Was this an influence for Empire Diner?
Broadway is a beautiful 1920s classic and I looked at as many Art Deco fonts as I could find. However, the nine capital letters on the diner's signage were the primary influence and my task was to create a complete repertoire faithful to the 1976 style. I love this way of working, matching up with a few given letters and trying to maintain consistency.
A characteristic feature of Empire Diner is the vertical/diagonal triline. Was it difficult to incorporate this into every character? You even seem to have achieved it on the ‘@’ symbol!
It was tricky to get the triline to work well and create evenly weighted characters, particularly with the diagonals and where diagonals flow into curves: ‘S’ and ‘8’ for instance. For a more comfortable fit the triline banding was scaled down a sixth for the lowercase.
Daniel Haettenschwiller – Maligne (Maxitype)
Maligne is a versatile geometric sans-serif type family with a wide range of alternates for each character, and a choice of 15 stylistic sets. What inspired its development?
The first use of the Maligne typeface dates back to 2011, when we designed a book for the artist Fuzi. While reviewing his photographs, we were struck by the unusual shape of a French train sign, which echoed the geometric structure of the hand-drawn letters. A preliminary version of Maligne was created for this project, and a few years later, together with Isia Yurovsky, we decided to expand the type family and release it for retail.
The inspiration for the typeface is rooted in the work of anonymous craftsmen from the early 20th century. These letter painters typically learned their craft by copying existing designs, guided by manuals that outlined the construction of letterforms. Over time, however, they introduced subtle personal variations to the original model, creating alternative versions of the predefined design.
You’ve written that Maligne was developed from a typeface originally developed in 2011. What led you to extend it into the flexible tool that it has now become?
Maligne was left in the drawer for a while. Due to our busy schedules, we didn’t have the opportunity to work on it for several years. However, this pause gave us valuable perspective, ultimately helping the typeface find its place and unique character. Typically, type designers make choices to limit stylistic options, but in the case of Maligne, we took a more maximalist approach. Instead of narrowing things down, we asked ourselves “why not include all the options?”. This was also a nod to the original sign-painting sketches, where artisans often offered a variety of highly personal variants for similar letterforms. The result is a versatile, diverse toolkit that can adapt to any situation.
Given the large number of variations that are available in Maligne, how did you decide what to make the standard set of glyphs that you get with the default OpenType settings?
The standard set of glyphs features the most “classic” or “traditional” letterforms, providing a more streamlined voice. Our main goal was to make the base set as versatile as possible, ensuring it could easily adapt to various contexts. This core set can then be enhanced with additional variants to better suit specific needs, such as adding autotune effects or dub sirens for a personalised remix.
In your experience, do users of Maligne tend to standardise on one stylistic set, or do they mix and match alternate glyphs for individual characters?
Maligne is still quite young, having been released recently, so we don’t yet have enough data to define a clear trend. However, one early use that we really like is the redesign of Esquire Italia by Cabinet Milano and Dual Room (examples on Instagram). Their balanced use of alternates for headlines combined with subtle punctuation choices for running text works really well.
Todor Georgiev – Grima (Fontfabric)
Grima is an unusual script font in five widths, plus a variable font. What gave you the idea of creating it?
As is typical in my practice, I wanted to experiment and create something unique that hadn’t been explored much before. On the other hand, I aimed to minimize the kerning process as much as possible. This led to the idea of designing letters that occupy their bounding boxes as tightly and comfortably as possible. The result was a typeface with more individuality and a sense of completeness in each glyph.
This approach required special attention to each character’s skeleton and details. Once I found the right methodology, designing the letters and exploring ways to achieve my vision became a fun and engaging process. Initially, I envisioned the letters with a unilinear stroke for ease of construction. However, during the process, I quickly realized that a calligraphic stroke mimicking a flat instrument was a perfect fit. This added depth and enriched the overall feel of the typeface.
Grima's letterforms are very unfamiliar; are they based on a traditional script, or did you design them?
All the letterforms are my own creation, designed specifically for this project. They are driven by the concept I had for Grima and informed by years of studying, drawing, and experimenting with letterforms. Although the design might seem calligraphic, my approach to creating Grima wasn’t based on traditional calligraphy. Instead, I relied on my preferred method: drawing, either with pencil on paper or digitally using a graphic tablet.
While my initial digital sketches were presented to Fontfabric as proposals, the explorations during the production process were done with graphite.
Grima is available in five widths, from narrow to extra wide, and you’ve created a variable font that covers the whole range. Are the width changes an optical scaling, or do the character shapes change across the different widths?
The changes are exclusively in the width. There are no modifications to the stroke thickness or contrast, and the details remain largely unaffected. The focus was on creating consistency across all widths while preserving the typeface’s core identity.
Did you design Grima with any particular applications in mind?
Let’s be honest; Grima isn’t for everyone and certainly not for every occasion. That said, I believe it has the potential to find its way into a wide range of industries and applications. Grima offers a contemporary aesthetic that’s both distinctive and unprecedented. Its uniqueness makes it hard to compare with any other typeface, which was precisely the goal.
Grima’s bold and mystical character can bring a sense of magic, or even a surreal quality to designs. I envision it being used as headlines in editorial work, book covers, posters, album art, and all kinds of bizarre projects. I hope designers will use it in unexpected and creative ways. My wish is for it to be applied both skillfully and fearlessly.
The creation of Grima and its production was a highly rewarding journey. I’m particularly proud because this was my first time designing a variable font from start to finish. A big thank you to Fontfabric’s team for believing in the concept and trusting me with this project. Who knows? Maybe we’ll collaborate again in the future.