Isabel Willason

Gordita is a minimal sans serif typeface with a geometric foundation that has been built upon with modern details that result in an optically balanced, friendly typeface.

When designing Gordita referring to features in Futura were influential as were the structural and harmonious strokes of Gotham. Forms have been optically compensated to appear natural and purely geometric. Joints are slightly tapered and ink traps feature in heavier weights with the purpose of achieving maximum legibility.

Gordita has been tested in print and on screen in a wide range of point/pixel sizes. The family is equipped with OpenType features including alternate glyphs, fractions, case sensitive forms, small figures, arrows and symbols as well as old style and tabular figures.

Now delivered in 7 weights with matching italics that slant at 15°. The italics are slightly lighter and narrower than the upright versions. The horizontal weighting in the italics have been reduced to compensate for the loss of vertical stroke thickness.

With support for over two hundred languages with an extended Latin and Cyrillic character set, Gordita is ready to be put to work. Designed by Thomas Gillett, metrics and engineering by iKern (Igino Marini).

The family has been recently updated to include two additional weights (Thin & Ultra + their matching italics) as well as slightly opened apertures for better legibility in the heavier weights, new glyphs and more opentype features.

Ulm Grotesk is a family of geometric-style fonts for use at display sizes. Its design is so simplified that it feels quite futuristic. There are five weights on offer, ranging from Light to Extra Bold. The characters have been drawn with optically-monolinear strokes. The capital letters contain quite a lot of character; some of them are markant, too. The ‘J’, for instance, is very wide. The fonts’ default ‘Q’ separates the ‘O’ stroke from the tail visibly; a more traditional-looking ‘Q’ is available as an alternate. The forms of the capital ‘A’, ‘V’, ‘W’, and ‘Y’ are reminiscent of the ‘worm logo’ that was used by NASA in the 1970s and ’80s. The lowercase ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘r’, and ‘u’ are spurless. The high-modernist geometric style of the ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’ call Paul Rand’s iconic ABC logo to mind. The tail of the ‘j’ is a simple, vertical stroke. The ‘g’ and the ‘y’ each have wide, sweeping tails – although, there is an alternate ‘y’ available, with a straight-tailed descender. The fonts’ numerals are the same height as the capital letters. Ulm Grotesk is named after the German city of Ulm. In the 1950’s and ’60s, a famous West German design school operated there. The Ulm School of Design was hailed as a successor to the Bauhaus, and it set important impulses for international graphic and product design. These Ulm aftershocks were felt for the next several decades. The fonts are the work of the Paris-based type designer Ilya Naumoff.