It’s All in the Font
Typography can tell a story. Our Senior Creative Designer, Jan Falinski, tells the one behind our new font.
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Type is to visual design what voice is to human interaction.
Human voice sets the tone of a conversation, making us feel angry, scared, in danger, in control, but also comfortable, loved and belonging.
In the same way, typography in brand design creates a powerful relationship between the message and its viewer, communicating the brand values and vision effectively.
When intended in this way, a type stops being just a type, it gets multiple levels of meaning.
A type can become a time machine, by which the designer can hark back to a particular period of history and, therefore, acquire its visual power
Typography can be a portal — forging a strong connection with the company’s audience, and gaining their trust and loyalty.
An Emotive Approach
Our process was driven by emotions, aiming to set a tone of voice that could be the keystone of all our communication voices.
We decided to redesign the iGenius identity starting from three fundamental design principles: simple geometry, a graphic statement based on the circle as the primary form, and the use of motion to give meaning to our visual communication, in order to create a more flexible, scalable and expressive design system.
Starting from this premise, we thought of four main keywords:
❤️ Empathy.
💧 Fluidity.
💬 Interaction.
🙂 Simplicity.
Each keyword is relevant to iGenius’ vision, and guided us during the design process.
Presenting Gravitonium Sans
Gravitonium Sans has a strong geometric pedigree.
Its path traces back to many great types like Laurenz Brunner’s Circular, Tobias Frere-Jones’ Gotham and Paul Renner’s Futura — one of the first groundbreaking examples of this particular approach to typography.
It was the best way to set up a tone of voice that can simplify complex concepts — such as those related to artificial intelligence—that are very often tricky for people without a specific background.
We aimed to democratize access to technical information through the power of visual design.
We created a typeface based on primary shapes — balancing the excessive neutrality of a perfect geometric construction with optical corrections and shaping them through the concept of fluidity. This helped set a simple, yet accessible and human, tone of voice.
Given its open nature, creating an effective typographic message isn’t easy. It’s a discipline with no ‘hard and fast’ rules.
To make an effective typographic message, we had to blend logic and intuition. A purely logic or mechanical process would have compromised human expression.
Variability is the spice of life
Gravitonium Sans is a variable font — meaning all its variants are stored in one font file, making it far easier to develop and work with creatively. This format makes the font a sandbox for a visual designer — giving us the ability to gradually add variables (or axes) to help it suit any situation.
For example, the first release of this font has one axis — the weight (or boldness). It was made in five weight (from light to bold), interpolating the five instances between two main masters.
In the future, we’ll focus on creating new axes. These could be slant, width, or optical size, in order to create a typeface that can cover all the company’s communication needs.
A Growing Font for a Fast-Growing Company
With this project, we aimed to set up a new way for iGenius to communicate. One that’s scalable and flexible enough to evolve with the company in this period of rapid growth.
