Signifier – a Brutalist response to 17th century typefaces

Kia ora!<p>I’m Kris Sowersby, designer of Signifier and author of the design info post on Klim.<p>First up, I’d like to thank you all for taking the time to read it. I really appreciate it.<p>I’ve neither heard of Hacker News nor been here before. But I’m chuffed that you’re discussing and critiquing with such wit and (on the whole) sensitivity. I never expected it from this quarter, and it’s something that the online type &amp; design community seems to be lacking. I’ll address some specific points in thread where necessary.<p>—Chur.

The font is certainly interesting conceptually, and doesn&#x27;t look bad (though is largely indistinguishable from its &quot;Garamond&quot; source at normal sizes).<p>And while I&#x27;ve read the whole thing and understand why the author considers this to be a &quot;Brutalist&quot; philosophy, I respectfully disagree. This is merely vectors adhering to a grid, which has nothing to do with the &quot;exposing raw materials&quot; philosophy that is the core of Brutalism. [1]<p>To me, early pixel-based terminal fonts feel like the digital typography version of Brutalism -- not even attempting curves or calligraphy at all, but embracing the raw material of pixels for exactly what they are.<p>If the author wants to bring a similar Brutalist raw-materials approach to modern vector-based typography I&#x27;d find that interesting as well -- but that would seem to have been done a long time ago, with typography based solely on primitive geometric shapes, of which classic typefaces from the 20th century would seem most suitable (Futura [2], Avant Garde [3]).<p>In the end, Signifier is a cool concept typeface. But I unfortunately think the author fails at connecting it to Brutalism in any meaningful way, despite their attempt.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brutalist_architecture" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brutalist_architecture</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Futura_(typeface)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Futura_(typeface)</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ITC_Avant_Garde" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ITC_Avant_Garde</a>

I&#x27;m glad there are people in this world who can completely unironically and confidently write &quot;Signifier’s digital immateriality draws on a deeply material past. Acknowledging the processes and tools of digital form-making, I worked consciously with the computer to recast the lead, antimony, and tin of the 17th century Fell Types into ones and zeros.&quot;<p>I certainly couldn&#x27;t!

This is a surprisingly nice type face. It looks blocky when blown up, but it is really clean for small text. It took me a second to zoom in on the text and realize that the article is written in the typeface itself. I&#x27;m curious is there might be a legibility benefit to having a more rectilinear font. Perhaps the transfer function of TTF&#x27;s anti-aliasing is cleaner along the horizontal and vertical axes rather than along a diagonal or curve. Having a less curvy font might be easier to render since the edges align with the display.

I love it.<p>I don&#x27;t have much more to add than that: I <i>really</i> like this font. It pushes proportion in so many subtle ways, and the result is just... I want to write a book so that I can typeset it in Signifier.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t have thought it was possible to make a font that&#x27;s so recognizably classic and yet so distinctively itself. That took taste, and just enormous reserves of effort; but an effort which shows itself in a restrained, elegant fashion.<p>I firmly disagree with the comment that it&#x27;s indistinguishable from Garamond! The f, d, and g immediately tell me that this isn&#x27;t Garamond, and that&#x27;s before I opened up Font Book to compare some more subtle letters. The f positively looms over the subsequent letter, while the loop of g swells voluptuously into the space around it. Yet somehow, they manage to do this without crowding their neighbors.<p>That&#x27;s really hard! Again, love it. Great font.

I&#x27;ve never really thought too much about the font industry of the past - this is quite the interesting read.<p>The font he&#x27;s created is great. I wasn&#x27;t fond of the sharpness initially, especially when the text is blown up, but it reads wonderfully when it&#x27;s at a &#x27;normal&#x27; text size.<p>I must confess - I had no idea fonts were so expensive to license! (Not a criticism of the cost, just ignorant until now).

Related: If anyone is curious about the Fell Types, there are digitised versions available here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iginomarini.com&#x2F;fell&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iginomarini.com&#x2F;fell&#x2F;</a>

Not sure if it just me, but I find it considerably more relaxing to read the text from the photo of the page (with all the surface and font imperfections) than read text written with the same font rendered on solid background (this time perfect).<p>It&#x27;s almost like I need the paper and font imperfections to read faster.<p>My theory is that the brain somehow uses the paper and font imperfections to coregister (align) the binocular images from our eyes, which leads to smoother reading.

That epilogue was poignant and lent an entirely different feel to the entire article.

I love the post, I hate the font.<p>But I am glad they have made it. They also raise an important point: half-arsed revivals of older fonts. I&#x27;ve been trying to make posters in the style of 1930s adverts. There are a few challenges, but one of the biggest is finding the correct font that hasn&#x27;t been modernised.

I loved that after seeing the comparisons, you can notice that the article was writing in Signifier. Did not love the CPU usage of the page (at lease for me, it rocketed up. macOS, Safari)

Apple has for some reason licensed some of Klim type typefaces. If you are on latest version of OSX you can activate&#x2F;download them from Fontbook.<p>Klim type are objectively top 3 type foundries in the world not many people doing better than them. So its a great deal.

True brutalism would&#x27;ve been a bitmap font.

Wow. This is a wonderful work of digital craftsmanship. I was absolutely blown away.

This is a beautiful font, it looks like the kind of thing I would expect to be seen used in a dictionary or encyclopedia.

This is the CyberTruck of fonts, and it is brilliant in a similar way. I think this designer is on to something. The legacy type styles are proven over centuries - or have we just been conditioned over centuries? I think of this as a Serif with the legibility of a Sans.

I&#x27;m not sure I like the font but this sure is a lovely article

I like using interesting fonts and would definitely grab this for my Kindle if I could afford the price tag.

This was a great read. The subject is interesting, but I also enjoyed how it&#x27;s written. Thanks.

The philosophical context of font design is one of those niches of rarified contemporary hothouse cultural specialization that makes me thing, <i>this is as far as we go, as a culture.</i><p>Reading these things I inevitably experience intellectual vertigo, the deep-zoom-into-a-fractal sense of perfectly accurate, almost totally unnecessary, precision at microscopy scale. It&#x27;s more Gibson than Gibson, not least if you&#x27;re aware of Douglas Hofstadter&#x27;s obsession with &quot;letter spirits&quot; and their multidimensional relationship to GAI...<p>We had a good run.

Is this a joke? Is there an actual typeface somewhere here underneath all the pomo theory? Are the pictures of one font or many?

I&#x27;m sorry, but again, none of that stuff has anything to do with &quot;brutalism&quot; which has been made a complete buzzword for the last 4 years, just because &quot;design needs trends&quot;. No it doesn&#x27;t. Design for your audience and don&#x27;t follow &quot;trends&quot;.