The official South African website of the global manufacturing corporation BIC rises above and sets an example for its peer localisation sites with pristine crisp photography, pixel-perfect web layout elements, and a strong branding implementation including its typography.

BIC South Africa’s main landing page falls on a welcoming image displaying an array of pens, stationary lighters and razors, with a BIC mascot, logo, and title message set in CJ Type’s Dunbar Tall in ExtraBold style. The sleek and sharp lettershapes of Dunbar reflect the utilitarian simplicity and efficiency of BIC’s products with a hint of quirk such as the lighter buttons or the Dunbar letter e.

Dunbar is consistently applied through headings and product category landing page titles with the body paragraphs set in Julieta Ulanovsky’s Montserrat in a mix of its Medium and Regular weights. The website menus are set in Montserrat Regular and Bold styles.

Interestingly, upon entering the shopping pages, the website defaults all its fonts including the menus, headers and body text to Impallari Type’s Dosis typeface. Other localised sites of BIC default to Noto Sans, however several of these websites currently land on a “coming soon” page.

CJ Type’s founder shared that “they licensed Cyrillic in addition to Latin” and “they requested Kazakh glyphs” – possibly for future localized uses on the webpages for Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine.

The CSR pen donation initiative page uses Avenir and the handwriting font Journal in addition to the Dunbar and Montserrat brand fonts.

Shop pages maintain Dunbar in lighter weight for page title, however default to Dosis for menus, headers, buttons, and paragraphs.

Shop pages maintain Dunbar in lighter weight for page title, however default to Dosis for menus, headers, buttons, and paragraphs.

Branding from South African localized site rolled out to social media graphics

Stadttheater Gießen, or casually also called Theater Gießen, is a municipal theater and the cultural center of the German town Gießen. With two stages and 700 seats the theater hosts and entertains its guests with plays, musicals, operas, operettes, and dance performances.

Their typography uses CJ Type's geometric sans Dunbar Tall across all mediums including posters, brochures, website, and online presence, as well as for the “STADT THEATER GIEßEN” logo in all caps behind the brand’s iconic squiggle lines. The logotype is set in Dunbar Tall Medium.

Dunbar includes OpenType features catering to German language use, such as stylistic alternates for capital umlauts, as well as contextual ligatures for ch and ck.

The main theater building’s neo-classical architecture with Jugendstil influences from around 1907 reflects a preservation of the traditional entertainment artforms whilst appealing to younger contemporary audiences. The brand's typographic style plays on a similar appeal with its modernity: Dunbar was inspired by Erbar-Grotesk, a typeface designed in Germany by Jakob Erbar who first started exploring sans serif design in the early 1900s, close in time to when the theater in Gießen was built.

The visual identity complements its clean geometric typography with organic interactive squiggle lines unique to each performance. This component was developed by Patrik Hübner as a fluid generative design system.

These dynamic patterns mirror the gestures, voices, and movements of the stage, evolving in real-time to reflect the collaborative and exploratory spirit of the Stadttheater.

In 2022 the theater celebrated its visual refresh with a launch event. Visitors could interact to generate their own personalized squiggles, which blurred the lines between audience and performative play.

The logo combines caps with a lowercase eszett. CJ Dunn decided not to include an uppercase eszett. The font is a static version in which the letters R S T look different from the variable font version.

Fedrigoni is a world leading Italian paper manufacturing company which has built and established a strong bond with the creative industry since 1888.

The paper brand saw a revolutionary turning point with the design of its Paper Box swatch book in 2020. Graphic Thought Facility reimagined Fedrigoni’s logo (previously set in Peignot) with a redrawn version of Aldo Noverese’s Forma.

“For our specific headline setting, we needed something ‘between weights, and wanted to enhance the roundness of the font.” — Paul Neale, Principal and Creative Director of Graphic Thought Facility, interviewed by The Brand Identity

The supporting texts in all other areas uses David Jonathan Ross’s 2016 revival based on this very same typeface: Forma DJR. The Paper Box books are beautiful, functional tools designed with an adaptable graphic and typographic system. Transitioning from artistic to sleek, unwavering, and established, the visual impact of the 3-in-1 swatch book box left a mark on Fedrigoni.

Subsequently, Pentagram partner Harry Pearce and his team were commissioned to create a global brand identity for Fedrigoni and its sub-brands. The team honoured Graphic Thought Facility’s custom drawn logo as they identified:

“This perfectly signifies Fedrigoni’s new global identity: strong, bold and confident and celebrating its strong Italian heritage.” — Pentagram

Fedrigoni's new wordmark was made suitable for various applications from small business cards to large signage on their buildings and delivery trucks. This wordmark is joined with an upgraded version of the crest symbol holding a ladder icon symbolizing Verona and its year of origin 1888.

The branding project introduced a custom version of Forma DJR as the main typeface to complement the “Fedrigoni” wordmark offering clarity, function and legibility. Forma DJR is used in Text Regular and Text Bold styles.

The same brand treatment was rolled out to the main Fedrigoni Group brand and its sub-brands Paper, Distribution, and Fedrigoni Self-Adhesive Units including the recently acquired group companies Arconvert, Ritrama, and Industrial Papelera Venus. With the exception of some longstanding and cherished brands such as Fabriano that maintained their original image, the overall Fedrigoni brand architecture was unified with the help of strategist Federico Gaggio.

Pentagram’s rebrand was launched on 29 March 2021.

Old Fedrigoni branding

New Fedrigoni brand identity by Pentagram

TeamWBC is a Dutch architectural building firm whose brand presence and typography communicates a modern, reliable, practical and business confident attitude.

For titles and most headings CJ Type's Pennypacker Compressed is used in all-caps to maintain a heavily rectangular silhouette matching the imagery of TeamWBC’s portfolio. The title treatment of the two main pages on the website, “creatie” and “transformatie” use vertical stacking of the words “Creatie/Bouwen” and “Transformatie/verbouwen”, mirroring the idea of architectural elements such as pillars or tall apartment buildings, adding dynamism to the typography used in its clean rigid grid system.

TeamWBC utilises duotone coloring in their titles to highlight single words or distinguish the second part of the title as subheading – using black for the primary title and a secondary color such as white or blue for an expansion, explanation, or to add a punchline. For example, “Creatie/Bouwen” means “Create/Build” and “Transformatie/verbouwen” means “Transform/Rebuild”. Here, the first halves are shown in black, the second halves are added in the secondary color white. Another example can be seen in the TeamWBC process breakdown’s title treatment: “Zuiver gebouwd” (“Clean construction”) set in black and followed by “Zo doen we dat” (“This is how we do it”) set in their secondary color blue.

The body text, menu texts, buttons, and some headers are set in an open-source neo grotesque variable sans serif typeface: Inter by Rasmus Andersson.

TeamWBC’s logotype uses Inter Bold in negative tracking for “TEAMWBC” where the W is replaced by a vertically mirrored letter M, and Inter Regular for its subtitle “het zuivere bouwen”. The letter M is also used as a dynamic graphic web element on the landing page to highlight the main menu pages.

English version. Single page website with no menu items.

German version. Single page website with no menu items.

The title treatment for The Fantastic Four: First Steps was first teased in 2024 by Marvel Studios for its feature film scheduled for cinematic screening in 2025.

With the conscious choice to reintroduce adding “the” before “Fantastic” and a nod to the earlier comics of the Fantastic Four series, this main title is typeset in DJR’s Condor Compressed Medium Italic with modified letters F and c in “Fantastic”.

The new number 4 logo design also present on the Fantastic Four hero uniforms takes sole presence, omitting a redundant use of the word “Four” in the titles as they have been presented in the title treatment’s history so far.

Above the main title we see the Marvel logo placed with the word “STUDIOS” set in Jason Walcott's Hooligan JF. Below we see the subtitle “FIRST STEPS” set in a slanted version of Jens Gehlhaar's FF Neuwelt Inline.

Portuguese version, with custom Q tail and r hook.

French version, with custom q.

The secondary text on this French poster is in Brother 1816.

Makeshift language extension for Vietnamese

Video: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMvb96SvCVw

Roma is a selection of Gabriele Basilico’s photographic works curated by Matteo Balduzi, Giovanna Calvenzi and Pier Angelo Cappello, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture’s official general department of contemporary art in collaboration with the National Roman Museum, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea (Museum of Contemporary Photography), and the Basilica Archive. The exhibition and book were designed by Tomo Tomo, with Martina Ciccaglione as project leader.

The typographic choices using DJR’s Megazoid and Lineto’s LL Riforma typefaces reflect Basilico’s work, whose research focused on modern architectural developments in the city of Rome. A historic setting with contemporary appearance is represented with the bold stylized title Roma set in Megazoid, which has letterforms mimicking arches, windows, and doorways often seen in Basilico’s images. Megazoid's geometric shapes are complemented by informational texts composed along a grid, using the geometric sans LL Riforma in its Heavy style to match the boldness of the title. The muted color palette balances against the modern minimalist geometric typography by subtly evoking a reminder of historic Italy and allows the architectural photographs to take center stage.

The catalog comes with Italian and English text and was published as softcover with dust jacket by Electa.

Farmyard elevates frozen food to level with gourmet restaurant dishes and the Brighton-based UnitedUs brand agency took on the challenge to deliver their image with a punch.

An americana-inspired custom “Farmyard” wordmark is seen in the brand’s loud pink and medium yellow colours. A choice of palette displaying the balance of soft and strong, which take presence throughout various ingredients of this brand identity including its typographical elements.

While Roslindale and Rough Marker are both used in header texts independently, more visual interest is brought out when both are used together resulting in a striking visual contrast of quick strokes and elegant lettershapes. In an interview with The Brand Identity, Luke Taylor, Co-founder and Creative Director of UnitedUs, explains:

The typography is a visual representation of that, with Roslindale providing the refinement juxtaposed with Rough Marker representing the electric attitude and handcrafted energy that Andrew and his team provide.

Combination of these type styles take position in several forms: A line of Roslindale text is overlapped with a line of Rough Marker. Two words are set in juxtaposed fonts sitting beside one another. And elsewhere, Rough Marker letters are singled out and dancing in an environment of Roslindale text using some good kerning game.

These playful typographical header treatments bring together the world of refined restaurants and quick frozen meals onto a single plane.

An amalgamation of visual push-and-pulls is grounded with body texts set in Neue Montreal and web menus in Instrument Sans. As a cherry on top, the Farmyard wordmark is cleverly woven into the background of crisp photographies to tie the branding identity design together.

Ondrej Jób from Setup Type designed the branding for the 2023 Fontstand International Typographic Conference held in Dublin, Ireland. Similar to previous years, the conference's visual identity utilises various typefaces from Fontstand’s online rental font catalog. This year’s primary font choices write “Fontstand” in Megazoid by DJR, “International” in Origin Super Condensed by Production Type, “Typography” in LeMark by Playtype, and “Conference” in the yet unreleased Async Sans by Setup.

The featured typefaces are set in single words and enveloped in rounded rectangular “buttons” or “cards”, which are then used as modular parts, and aligned either left or light to their boundary box for a digital-forward look. Graphic elements continued the use of gradients, this time referencing the host country’s flag.

Speaker names are shown in additional typefaces that were either designed by the person in question or were otherwise found to be a good match.

Based in Los Angeles, Heidi Duckler Dance is a dance company rooted in Democratic Dance, Arts Education, and Spatial Justice. Since 1985, it has been creating “site-specific performances that transform non-traditional spaces, providing learning opportunities and engaging diverse communities, in the belief that the arts can change our vision of the world and of ourselves.”

For the identity of Heidi Duckler Dance’s Truth or Consequences salon series, Traci Larson of Visual Issues made multicolored use of Streco.