LL Le Corbusier in use

“Contrary to public opinion, the letterforms now typically associated with Le Corbusier were not designed by the famous architect himself. The common name for this lettering style, in France, is ‘Char[r]ette’, as this type of lettering was often used on pushcarts (called ‘char[r]ette’ in french), packaging, signposts, etc. — in fact, anything that needed labelling.

It is common knowledge that Le Corbusier often adopted everyday objects from his immediate environment for his artistic and architectural work. Typical in this way is the use of this common stencil set for titling his plans. Later, with Le Corbusier rising to world fame as one of the most important architects of the 20th century, this lettering style became synonymous with Le Corbusier, and Letraset even wrongly listed him as designer of the font in their old catalogues.” More…

“The LL Le Corbusier fonts relate to three different sets of antique zinc lettering stencils, in the styles commonly offered by hardware stores and art supply shops across Europe throughout the 20th century.

The first digital interpretations of these stencil fonts date back to the 1990s, first created by Nico Schweizer for Lineto [Regular, Condensed] and later by Philippe Desarzens for Elektrosmog [Oldface], which were first released on Lineto in 1999 and 2004 respectively. To bring them in line with the requirements of contemporary designers working across media, two of the styles were redrawn from scratch in the summer of 2019 by Sascha Bente, but remained unreleased until Chiachi Chao joined the studio in 2022.

Chiachi engaged with a thorough reassessment, in the course redrawing and considerably expanding the glyph set to today’s standard. He took great care to strike a balance between refining the drawings and preserving the rugged character of the original stencil shapes.

After completion, Chiachi turned his attention to the Oldface set, the most classic of the three styles, which is commonly associated with the original plans and drawings of legendary Swiss architect and designer Le Corbusier (1885–1967). Finally, he added a Cameo version relating to the physical shape of the actual zinc stencils, providing additional scope for playful use.

The new LL Le Corbusier fonts are meticulously drawn, manually kerned, and feature a comprehensive glyph set. The new font files are not compatible with any of the previous versions as they are entirely redrawn and contain new metrical data.” [Lineto]