Album
- Category
- Work
- Year
- 2022 - WIP
Initial brief
Album is designed to be used as a typeface for content at any size with a casual and friendly look without being childish; warm but clear and legible, neutral but not impersonal.
Inspiration
From European eyes, round is broadly associated with adjectives such as warm, cute, cozy, friendly, casual, and so on, as opposed to square which is attached to formality, neutrality, precision, and anything of a serious matter.
The connection between roundness and cuteness/friendliness is so obvious that it doesn’t require much conceptual thinking to find it. In some cases, rounded shapes are preferred for more safety with objects. Or more accessible and welcoming when applied to anything that may not be otherwise... We could think of typefaces used in children’s books that give a friendlier look to those letters they may be still unfamiliar with, objects like child-safe scissors with rounded tips, or formal meetings around a rounded table that (may) become more casual.
In English there is the saying ‘fair and square’ and in French, when we say that someone has a “squared mind” (‘avoir un esprit carré’), it means that this person is pragmatic, disciplined, and does things with method and order.
Two basic shapes, full of meanings, and in multiple cultures.
About the design
Rounded everywhere
You got it, Album is all about roundedness. Rounded tips, rounded arches, curved diagonals, etc... But it stays legible anyway, at any size and weight.
Italics
The Italics are designed with a strong influence from handwritten letterforms, bringing a humanistic touch with a more natural and non-systematic movement.
Multiple weights
Album has a large variety of weights and widths, going from Condensed all the way to Wide, passing through its “core” width: Normal. If you feel like adjusting the weight to even greater precision, Album is available as a Variable Font with its weight and width axis!
Multiplexed
With each width, the corresponding characters in all weights are multiplexed, meaning: the same character doesn’t change its width across all weights. This feature makes typesetting on digital platforms easier, as bits of text can change weights in different situations without modifying the text’s total length.
Album is in progress for its future release! Stay tuned or feel free to get in touch for more information 🙂
