Heldane is a contemporary serif family inspired by the renaissance works of Hendrik van den Keere, Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon and Simon de Colines. Rather than emulating a specific font, Heldane amalgamates the best details from these sources into a cohesive whole. The classical typographic foundations of Heldane are refined with rigorous digital drawing. Continue reading

Geograph is a contemporary, plain sans serif designed for National Geographic. It comprises 24 styles for use across their broadcast, print and web channels. Geograph was designed under direction from Emmet Smith, Mariano Barreiro and Bethany Powell. We drew inspiration from several international type foundries. Continue reading

The inspiration, history and development of the Pitch Sans typeface family. Continue reading

The inspiration, history and development of the National 2 typeface family. This post covers the design concepts through to comparisons between National and National 2. Continue reading

Story Sans is a new font family designed for Trade Me — a screen-first, grotesk typeface aligned to their brand, values and tone of voice. It was designed with Trade Me’s internal design team, and is licensed exclusively for Trade Me. Continue reading

Untitled Sans and Untitled Serif are quotidian typefaces. Untitled Sans is a plain, neogrotesk sans validated by the ideas of Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa’s Super Normal project. When Untitled Sans was nearly finished, I applied the same principles to the creation of Untitled Serif, which is drawn from the old-style genre of types: the post-Caslon, pre-Times workhorses offered by almost every metal type foundry of the time. Untitled Sans and Untitled Serif are related neither by skeleton nor a traditional aesthetic connection, but by concept only. Continue reading

Financier is a new typeface family drawn for the redesign of the Financial Times (FT), which was launched in September 2014. It comprises two complementary sets of styles: Financier Display and Financier Text. Continue reading

PayPal Sans is a new screen-first typeface family designed for PayPal Inc. It is comprised of two complementary sub-families: PayPal Sans Big and PayPal Sans Small. It was designed with direction from the PayPal product team over the course of several months. Continue reading

Pure Pākati was designed for exclusive use by Tourism New Zealand, who were looking to move their “100% Pure” campaign away from several years of Middle Earth. This shift included an overhaul of their typeface and visual language. The typeface was designed by Phil Kelly, Rangi Kipa, Karl Wixon and Kris Sowersby. Continue reading

Domaine was an exploration into the unpopular Latin typeface genre; Domaine Sans delves into another unpopular genre: sans serifs with contrast. Continue reading

Maelstrom is a reversed-stress typeface. It’s a “perverse” typeface, to be sure, but that is exactly its charm. It belongs to a genre that seems destined to be perpetually a typographic outsider—never really fashionable yet never fully abandoned. Continue reading

The Domaine typeface family descends directly from the Hardys logotype and typeface, which I designed under direction from Adelaide-based design consultancy Parallax. Continue reading

The impetus for Founders Grotesk originally came from Duncan Forbes of The International Office. We had often discussed the nature and usefulness of the classic grotesks, and the possibility of creating a new one. After trawling through my 1912 Miller & Richard specimen, he became enamoured with their series of Grotesques, particularly the No.7 all-caps showing. Continue reading

Bula, a custom typeface designed for Fiji Airways commissioned by FutureBrand in Sydney. Continue reading

Pitch is a love letter to the typewriter. Continue reading

Stylistically Darling is a wide, light, airy slab serif. It was drawn to set comfortably as text and confidently for headlines. It strikes a quiet balance between a plain skeleton and fanciful flourishes. The details are drawn largely from the Ionic genre, whereas the skeleton and structure tends towards geometric slab serifs. Continue reading

Newzald is a hardworking text typeface designed for the international editorial environment. Continue reading

Karbon is an open, geometric sans serif with a contemporary spartan finish. It is an exploration of Paul Renner’s reductionist Futura concept channelled through the proportions of Eric Gill’s eponymous sans, with a slight nod towards Jan Tschichold's Uhertype sans-serif. Continue reading

The custom typeface Hokotohu in use by Charlie Ward from DNA Design in Wellington, New Zealand. Continue reading

Tiempos was initiated as an optimisation of Galaxie Copernicus for a Spanish newspaper redesign. Although it began as an offshoot of Galaxie Copernicus, Tiempos evolved far enough that it became its own standalone family. Copernicus is based on Plantin, its broad proportions are designed to harmonise with Chester Jenkins’ Galaxie system. Over the last century, Plantin has influenced many typefaces, the most notable example is Stanley Morison’s Times New Roman. Continue reading