A typeface by Henriette Jørstad at NTNU
Indy Sans
👥 Individual assignment
💻 Software: FontLab Studio
⏳ Project length: ca. 2 months
Brief
Create a new individual typeface with strong focus on text typography. Define the potential use/application of the new typeface and analyze it. Who are the readers? How would the typeface be used within the application? Is a sans serif or a serif most appropriate for the application? Define the main vertical metrics: baseline, ascender, cap-height and descender.
Solution
I chose to create a grotesque font that aims to work in bulk text on digital surfaces. The writing is almost monolinear with little stroke contrast. Indy Sans is named after my dog Indy, This name is a twist on the English word "indie" which is short for "independent". "Sans" comes from the term "sans serif" which means "without serifs". My dog is small, which the font is designed to be. I have mainly taken inspiration from Swiss grotesque fonts and put a lot of focus on readability.
The top or bottom is cut off at an angle where the stem extends above or below the bow and shoulder section. By giving these areas more air, we avoid that these letters gain an optically greater weight than the other letters. This helps to create better flow in text with a small font size.
Lower case "l" is curved at the end of the stem to distinguish it from capital "i". The same applies to the lowercase letters "y", "j", "g" and "t" to maintain harmony in the writing.
Letters with ears or cut ends have also been bevelled. This has been done to create more air, while also helping to shape a more uniform identity in the typeface.
The letters have a relatively small stroke contrast. This makes the font seem more robust and is thus better adapted to digital surfaces.
