New Additions: August 2026
31st August 2026
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:
Lucas Le Bihan – Scenery (Formagari)
Scenery is a rounded sans-serif typeface in eight weights, plus italics. What were your inspirations for the typeface?
Scenery started as a specific set of letters for the identity of a small farm near the place I grew up. The idea was that the shape of the terminals would resemble the farm’s animals’ legs. The short ascenders/descenders are the consequence of the lack of space on the labels of the cheese the farm is selling; it became the most distinctive feature of the typeface. The overall proportions are inspired by geometric grotesques, Classified Display (1955) from Linotype for example, and some details, such as the double-story ‘a’, came from neo-grotesque typefaces. During the development process I had other influences, especially the version of Univers Adrian Frutiger drew for the IBM Typewriter, on display at the ANRT in France last year.
The Thin to Regular weights of Scenery have some distinctive features: the serifs on the ’S’ and ’s’, and the gaps in the ‘6’, ‘8’, and ‘9’. However these disappear in the Medium to Black weights. What’s the thinking behind this?
The previous typeface I drew (Chantier, 2024) featured serifs everywhere apart from the ‘s’; I decided to reverse that statement for this one. The other distinctive letterforms came from experiments I made on open ornamental shapes for a previous typeface (Eusa, 2024). During the sketching process I thought that they worked quite well in the context of the thinner weight that I was working on at the time. The idea was at first to keep consistency at the scale of the family, but the constraints of the bolder weights prevented me from doing so. In the end, the removal of the open shapes matches the more squared and frank shapes of the bolder weights. It divides the typeface into two parts, more elegant and text-oriented for the lighter weights, sturdier and visually present for the bolder ones, with the Medium weight acting as a bridge between the two.
You’ve written that in Scenery you intentionally made the stroke ends squarer in the heavier weights, as in Berthold Block, unlike other rounded typefaces like Frankfurter Medium where they are semicircular. Why did you decide on this?
The initial idea was to build letterforms that evolved around the tension between sturdiness and lightness. For that matter I wanted to avoid elements that would give the typeface too much of a playful appearance. The squared/rounded stroke ends derived from this, the little flare adding an element of lightness. The inspiration also came from a set of of letters from Tezzo Suzuki that achieved the kind of balance I was writing about earlier (Typographic Sabotage, 2019). At the same time it gives the typeface a sense of materiality and something for the reader’s eyes to hold on to, making it very effective at the scale of the paragraph.
Did you have any specific applications in mind when you designed Scenery?
The intended use was at first the farm’s identity, of course. But during the drawing process the typeface got to be used in a variety of other projects, thus shaping the typeface and the applications that I have envisaged over time: a festival identity (Stunfest, 2024), a book cover (Essays on Strategy, Technology, and Society, J. Haese, 2025), and an art event identity (Rendez-vous à Saint-Briac, 2025). I think it is a pretty versatile typeface that achieves a good balance between a strong visual presence and good legibility with long texts.
Hugh Morse – Velo (Weekend Type)
Velo is a condensed sans-serif font in ten weights in which the letter ‘O’ is circular shaped and so eccentrically wide. What inspired its design?
The initial inspiration for Velo, as the name suggests, came from cycling. The design translates the tubular geometry of bike frames and the kinetic, streamlined graphics of 1920s and ’30s cycling posters into engineered typographic forms, anchored by a circular ‘O’ as a direct play on bicycle wheels.
Beyond the literal cycling motif, Velo is anchored in the mid-century European editorial tradition. It draws heavily on the bold, high-contrast display typography of the 1960s and ’70s, specifically the legendary art direction of Willy Fleckhaus for Twen magazine. In that spirit, Velo pairs tight, compressed vertical stems with optional open rounds to give designers flexible headline styling across its ten weights.
Velo follows in the tradition of earlier condensed typefaces with wide circular-shaped letters, such as Organda and Plaza. However, in these the wider characters include other circular-shaped letters, such as the ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘G’, ‘O’, and ‘Q’. Why did you decide to limit the wide characters to the ‘O’ (and its accented variants)?
Limiting the geometric rounds strictly to the uppercase and lowercase ‘O’ preserves both the metaphor and the typeface’s industrial DNA. It keeps the bicycle wheel reference clean and focused, rather than diluting the concept across every curved glyph. Velo’s skeleton draws heavily from the engineered practicality of industrial lettering templates, painted asphalt markings, and other utilitarian signage applications. Restricting the wide rounds ensures the typeface never loses that robust, constructed identity. The rounds give designers an unexpected graphic burst when they want it, and a straightforward, functional compressed sans when they turn the feature off.
In Velo you’ve also provided a “Compressed rounds” OpenType stylistic set to allow the designer to select a compressed ‘O’ that matches the widths of the other characters. What was the thinking behind this?
The wide ‘O’ gives Velo its signature graphic identity; it’s the hook that gives a headline or wordmark instant character. But we wanted Velo to have life beyond that specific motif. The foundation beneath these optional rounds is a rigorous, engineered compressed alphabet. Providing the compressed rounds as a stylistic set gives designers complete control over the typographic tone. They can dial in the circular characters if called for, or switch to the uniform compressed set when the brief demands pure, uninterrupted utility.
There is also an “Open apertures” stylistic set with open apertures on characters such as the ‘C’, ‘G’, ‘J’, ‘S’, ‘a’, ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘g’, and ‘s’, transforming it into a more stylised, mid-century Italian modernist poster aesthetic.
Velo seems ideal for giving an Art Deco feel to display applications in fashion, posters, and book covers. Have you used it in any applications yourself?
It definitely shares that Art Deco DNA; the blend of geometric purity and bold engineered forms with elegant hairline punctuation and diacritics is a natural fit for fashion and editorial work.
The earliest version of the typeface was actually developed for the visual identity of a cycling café and community hub. It was designed to solve a specific identity requirement; marrying the mechanical, utilitarian spirit of bike culture with a sharp, contemporary hospitality aesthetic.
Its impact across physical signage, print, digital and apparel was the catalyst to take that core concept and develop it into a standalone commercial family.
Dušan Jelesijević – Deserter (Tour De Force)
Deserter is a techno-style typeface in seven weights, and with a variable version. What inspired you to design it?
The main idea was to make a monospaced-inspired typeface, but instead of following a monospaced width philosophy, to keep a slight difference in character widths. The aim was to create a font for coding, branding, and everything related to the IT sector and current tech usages.
Deserter gets its high-tech look from its use of modular shapes, such as rounded rectangles and angled lines, reminiscent of the machine-readable font OCR-A. Were you inspired by this or any other fonts?
Actually I was anti-inspired. I know those fonts well and I didn't want to achieve such a look. I wanted something different, but staying in that style category.
One of the most idiosyncratic characters in Deserter is the ‘r’; it’s perfectly readable in the context of a word, such as the name of the font, but on its own it might be a bit baffling. What gave you the idea for it?
I have some similar character designs in my Ducktail family, mostly in the lowercase letters. In Deserter, they ended up looking more radical, but when they form a word or sentence the font looks pretty interesting. It's very simple by design, with not much detail, just a straightforward font design for different types of projects; at least in my view.
Deserter looks as if it would work well as a wide font too, like for example Controller Two; have you considered adding a width axis to the variable font?
Honestly, no. For me, it's the end of the story as far as this design is concerned; I've already moved on to another design!