Medium 0
Medium 0 is an internal printed publication, self-initiated by Medium’s design team with assistance from the editorial and marketing teams. It comprised a handful of the best pieces published on Medium in 2018, representing the broad spectrum of stories that appear on Medium from writers of all types.
This project came together in just over a week. The two designers worked together to establish a basic grid and typestyles, and then mostly separately to translate the articles from their digital form. In most cases, this meant creating a bespoke feature treatment from scratch as the original articles didn’t have accompanying artwork or display type.
Lars and an unreleased serif by Kris Sowersby are used for body text throughout. The front and back cover consist of a modified M from Maelstrom, creating an abstract front cover that reveals itself upon opening.
44pp, oversized newsprint. Design by Noah Baker and Dora Godfrey. Art direction by Ryan Hubbard. Special thanks to Bethany Heck and Renald Louissaint.
Further documentation by Bethany on heckhouse.com.
The narrow type in the black ovals is Cardinal Fruit, available from Production Type.
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The X on the left hand page is taken from Breite Fette Antiqua by Forgotten Shapes.
Lonely City, with caption-like snippets set in WiseType’s Monarch.
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Justified Compacta Black is paired with Klim’s unreleased serif for a powerful opening page.
All-caps Lars is contrasted with Klim’s upcoming Fournier-inspired serif.
4 Comments on “Medium 0”
The Fournier-inspired serif is Signifier.
No doubt. Added, thanks!
Signifier definitely looks a bit like some Fournier types but the roman type it’s based on came a bit before Fournier, it was most likely engraved by the seventeenth-century Belgian-Dutch punchcutter Nicolaes Briot (with some later replacement characters). There’s information on this in John A. Lane’s book Early Type Specimens in the Plantin-Moretus Museum on pages 20–21, and here, as well as in this article also by Lane. (I sent details on this to Mr. Sowersby some time ago, and he generously linked to it in his fascinating article on the type’s design.) The italic is based on one by Robert Granjon.
Sorry to divert even further, but I thought you might enjoy seeing this section of an atlas we have at Letterform Archive which features Briot type.