Raw Type

Lineto

Posted by Nick | Posted in General

Think Swiss type design and you will probably conjour up images of grids, Josef Müller-Brockmann, and The International Typographic Style. These days though, it’s all about Lineto.

Lineto is a small type foundry based in Switzerland and since 1993 they have built up an array of original and somewhat unique typefaces. You may recognise the name as the people who (in collaboration with type designers Norm) brought us Simple, the typeface featured in the film Helvetica from which a specialist version was redrawn for the Köln-Bonn airport in Germany. Some images from the sample booklet are shown below.

Along with Simple, there are numerous other typefaces which are divided into sections such as Modular, Graphic, Text and Headline

To accompany some of their typefaces, Lineto produce beautifully designed specimen books. These can be seen in the Simple examples above, and Akkurat below (sorry, most of these are sold out).

And, as well providing great insight into the work, the Lineto website also deserves a mention. It provides a really user-friendly and enjoyable experience allowing navigation via a floating palette, which can be positioned anywhere on screen and displays the path to pinpoint where you are. It’s just a very simple, clever idea and, like many, it seems so obvious now.

There are also a few added features such as this Lego Font Creator, which is easy and fun to play with. They even provide a useful typewriter application to test their fonts in (see main image). So, check out Lineto, and if you don’t like their site (some won’t appreciate the back button being turned off) I’m sure you’ll enjoy their fantastic profile images.