Mundo Serif: An Interview

Mundo Serif is ready to take on just about any project. Carl Crossgrove drew the suite of typefaces to complement his Mundo Sans family’s classic humanistic design traits — and added a subtle modern influence. We talked with him to learn more!

What inspired you to design this typeface? Were you designing for a specific use case or customer? Or were you more focused on a particular artistic vision? Or some combination of both?

Mundo Sans was designed 18 years ago as a companion to Roman serif book types like Bembo, Galliard, Dante, Garamond, and Sabon. Now, so many years and technological changes later, those same excellent roman types tend to need a lot of adaptation to maintain their clarity and strength in digital reading environments. We are collectively developing new reading habits based on our device use. Mundo Serif is an attempt to update and strengthen the Renaissance Roman for digital environments. As Mundo Sans was intended to be a workhorse sans, Mundo Serif is intended to perform in a wide range of tough situations.

Walk us through the process of designing this typeface. Was there anything different about it, compared to your usual process? Did it come along more easily than others, or were there unique challenges?

Mundo Serif has the same skeleton and origins as Mundo Sans, so the design could start with the essential shapes and proportions of Mundo Sans. Much had to change in order for letters and spacing to be balanced, but the process was aided by the presence of the Sans as example. There were a lot of unresolved details for a long time. Until a meaningful number of characters are designed, and the type can be viewed in context (long texts on screen), it’s hard to know what is undesirable noise and what is useful. This design needed a lot of testing in late development so that its performance would be solid.

Looking ahead, are there new projects you’re excited about? Anything you haven’t tried yet but are eager to explore?

I have an experimental alphabet of ornaments in the works, which is a departure for me, because most of my work derives from classic western calligraphy. Reducing letters to abstract shapes is a fun change of focus. If I can find the time, I’ll be releasing a couple new families this year, a retro display type family, and something kind of weird. That’s all I can say!