Readymag Design Almanac: Typography

Spektra and Acumin belong to the neo-grotesque font family—this kinship is most pronounced in their elongated vertical proportions. Despite that, the nature of these ‘relatives’ is fundamentally different. Spektra is a reasonable, but ironic display typeface with a harsh temper; it can also get a radical slant. Its vigor is balanced and toned down by the narrow Acumin Pro C.—neutral as water and always discreet. When paired up, Spektra will convey the emotions and topicality of the message, allowing Acumin to complete the story in a calmer tone.

1. Proportions

Neo-grotesques appeared quite recently: in the 50s, designers began to use them actively in newspaper headlines and posters. The genre developed in the traditions of the Swiss school—neo-grotesques are standard, functional fonts, usually coming in many weights and styles. “Their straightforward egalitarian qualities have struck a chord for designers who wish to explore information-driven typography with a modernist sense,” writes Robert Slimbach, Adobe’s chief font designer and the author of Acumin. Neo-grotesque typefaces have vertical axes, near-zero contrast, and oblique letterforms used as italics. Spektra and Acumin inherit most of these features.

“Spektra was specially designed for even, heavy text blocks; its graphic is subordinated to this purpose. The main feature of this graphic are the thin white spaces between letters and the same thin counter-shapes inside letters. This [can] be clearly seen in signs such as t, which, withithin other constructions, would destroy the texture of the set. Thus, the thin gaps inside the letters were the feature that determined the spirit of the font and the shapes of several letterforms in the typeface, such as J, N, M, the Cyrillic Ж and, for example, the Greek ξ,” says Ilya Ruderman, the co-founder of Russian studio CSTM Fonts and type.today store.

The condensed Acumin Pro C. is intended primarily for display use, although it can also be effective at smaller sizes for subheads and shorter texts when tracked accordingly. The clarity of the condensed font face has been maintained by maximizing the internal white space of its letter counters: with a consistent high-oval countershape, and by making the joins between the rounds and vertical stems not excessively deep. Just as modular building materials can be arranged and brought to life by the architect and builder, the expressive qualities of Acumin are revealed through the typographer’s thoughtful arrangement.

2. Details

Both Spektra and Acumin abandon many of the stylistic conventions of the 60s and 70s neo-grotesque or reinterpret them for new media. A typical neo-grotesque feature is the alignment of descenders, dots above i and j, and caps. Thus, letters become a functional building material: it is convenient to assemble tightly knit “architectural” headings into several lines, which was a popular design gimmick in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Working on Acumin, Robert Slimbach went against this artificial limitation. In his opinion, eliminating alignment makes the font "truly neutral," as well as warmer, more elegant and easier to read on devices with electronic screens.

Notice some of the subtle features in Acumin that are atypical for classical neo-grotesques: proportional numerals (on by default) and ff ligatures (the design doesn’t really require the other f-ligatures). The design of the comma is clearly differentiated from the design of the period, which is not true of many neo-grotesque typefaces. He opted for a curved, single-stroke comma, rather than the typical period-with-a-tail. Further subtleties added to Acumin’s style are the slightly angled terminals on baseline crossbars, like in the uppercase E and L. Another carefully well thought-out detail is the design of the capital J. Slimbach wanted to avoid the “candy-cane style,” so he gave it a cut-off form – again, more streamlined – that he felt would be less obtrusive in text and provide a more balanced presence for all-caps.

Spektra leverages the inherent qualities of electronic screens. An important feature of Spektra is its bi-slanted style, in which tiny white spaces look different from just a straight line. In pre-retina times, all these gaps would not be visible on the screen. At the same time, Spektra is quite a fancy font. “Pay attention, for example, to the high tail of t, not typical for the Latin alphabet y, and to the number 4,” says Tanya Egoshina, designer at Readymag. “Acumin is more even and calm, but it also has some outstanding features: L and E have their bottom strokes cut off obliquely, X has a noticeable change in stroke thickness, it is wider at the ends, but narrower toward the center.”

The family supports many script systems other than Latin and Cyrillic, including Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek. The multilinguality of this typeface defines its character — democratic and cosmopolitan, it combines the specifics of many different scripts.

Aktiv Grotesk lies at the intersection of many classic grotesque designs, combining qualities into a unified and coherent expression, and functionality. “This typeface is truly modernist — it was conceptualized with expansion into a myriad styles and languages in mind, to help you build a true type system. It has clear lines and no frills, but subtle design features lend it a personality outside the known genres,” explains Bruno Maag, the Chairman of Dalton Maag studio.

When Robert Slimbach saw the movie Helvetica, he was surprised: this iconic neo-grotesque was designed as a display typeface. Yet, the font became extremely popular and widely used for text. Slimbach decided to combine neutrality with readability and create his own neo-grotesque, one that would be beneficial both as a display and type font. These were the factors that shaped the design process for Acumin.

In designing the font, Slimbach was dealing with subtleties, not new design features. He proceeded from an idea that had been proposed before: that the structure of a grotesque is, historically, the same as that of a modern-style serif face. Just without the high contrast and the serifs. “Reduction in form of the modern serif structure,” is what Slimbach called the principle he followed, while designing Acumin.

Spektra was created during the COVID-19 pandemic by Krista Likar and Alja Herlah, founders of independent Slovenian type design studio Type Salon, as a beautiful metaphor for the friendship between peoples. Spending days inside small spaces and not being able to enjoy social and outdoor activities made Likar and Herlah contemplate the new state of the world and actively exchange ideas. “Our primary thought was that diversity of cultures, ideas, religions and races contributes to the richness of every day and so affects every person. Accordingly, we gathered our thoughts and applied them to the activity we enjoy most—designing typefaces,” Alja says.

In Slovenia, the quarantine led to protests. “As unrest expanded to other countries, we felt that Spektra could be a representative type. With that in mind, we designed a bold condensed typeface that uses the same counter space that bonds various scripts together: Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew. Therefore, Spektra unites different locations, cultures and ideas around the world and celebrates the differences among them,” Alja says.

“Developing the typeface, we were heavily influenced by the famous poster campaign ‘War Is Over’ by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The poster spreads a hope for peace through a simple message set in bold, compressed and tightly-spaced uppercase letters,” she adds.