Darlene is a new effects pedal created by Heather Brown Electronicals. Brown describes its voicing as “intentionally neutral. No color, no smear. Just preserved dynamics with rich sustain, natural attack, and silent operation.”

Designed by Graham McClanahan, this pedal goes all-in on typography. Nearly the entire face (!) of the pedal is occupied by the pedal’s name, typeset in Fit. The letters are arranged in a 4×2 grid, with “DARLENE” set in Fit’s Normal width and “COMPRESSION” squeezed into the upper right cell, stretching the typeface to its narrowest, least-readable limit!

The pedal’s dials have labels set on a circle in Avenir Next Condensed. Supplemental information on the side is Heather’s handwriting, digitized!

McClanahan said about the choosing the typeface:

I was actually scrolling Adobe fonts a while back and FIT stood out immediately, so I saved it and played around with it but didn’t really have an application. When I worked with Heather a few months later, we tried a lot of different artwork iterations and nothing really seemed right and then I stumbled upon FIT again. It was my first time using a variable typeface in print so it was a lot trial and error and fun. True to its name it just fits anywhere and has so many possibilities (I probably did over 50 different versions initially because it was so fun). Also this being a compression pedal FIT seemed natural here. Absolutely brilliantly crafted. Something that also worked so well is Heather was hoping to have someway to emphasize DAR on Darlene because of a family member’s nickname that inspired the theme/name of the pedal. This wasn’t really working with the other iterations we went through and we were ready to ditch it but with how flexible the layout possibilities are on FIT it was a huge win to incorporate that in the final. Most importantly David’s typeface carries the design so credit to his brilliance here and I’m excited to see more of what’s to come from him.

As the font’s designer, I couldn’t be more thrilled with this application of Fit… this is the kind of thing it was born to do!

Packaging

Packaging interior

Fit Devanagari was used by Addikt for the stage graphics at the Kyoorius Design Awards 2024 held in Mumbai:

Since 2013, the Kyoorius Design Awards have honoured and recognised excellence across Indian design, encompassing Architecture, Interiors, Communication Design and Product Design.

Presented by ZEE5, the Kyoorius Design Awards is an ethical and neutral platform designed to judge work purely on its own merit. This translates to a non-hierarchial award strucutre. There are no Golds, Silvers or Bronzes.

The Elephant remembers the work, even when the rest of the world forgets.

Safari Riot is an agency helping aspiring digital artists start making money with their projects. Safari Riot with their business partners solve marketing and business planning tasks and produce collaborations. One can become one of the agency’s clients by sending their work at the project’s email.

The agency’s homepage uses variable Fit by David Jonathan Ross and all the other pages are typeset in Compagnie by Pyte Foundry (used for headlines) and Cartograph CF by Connary Fagen (body text).

In what is probably the largest use of my fonts ever (and without a doubt the corniest ?), Mike’s Maze at Warner Farm in Sunderland, Massachusetts has debuted its Fall 2023 corn maze featuring Fit and Lab DJR.

Employing font sizes of up to 151,165pt (that’s a 44-yard / 40-meter cap height), designer Jess Marsh of Hired Hands Signs chose artificial intelligence as the theme of this year’s maze.

In a dense border around the edge of the maze, she asks the question, “In the age of artificial intelligence, what makes us human?”

As visitors wander Fit’s narrow corridors (reminiscent of the circuitry in a computer chip), they ponder this question and encounter tech trivia and decoding challenges along the way.

In the center of the maze, the space opens up and visitors experience the raster grid of the word “ThiNkiNG” set in Lab DJR.

In a field just to the northwest, a companion maze used for beer tastings features the word “DRINKING” set in a chunkier cut of Fit, with bubbles floating around it.

While designing the maze, Marsh used Fit’s variable width axis to subtly adjust the text to align with the rows of corn and fill the length of the field. She worked with Precision Mazes to execute the design with a combination of drones, GPS-guided tractors, and manual labor. Marsh and farmer David Wissemann had to clear out the thin strips of Fit’s counterforms using shovels and hoes, since those interior spaces could not be accessed by tractor. (I helped out a little in the field too, photo evidence below.)

Mike’s Maze was started by farmer Mike Wissemann (David’s father) and artist Will Sillin over twenty years ago, and each year’s maze centers on a different theme. The maze is a popular autumn destination for families in Western Massachusetts, and this year’s maze was front page news in the local paper. In addition to exploring the maze, visitors can eat cider donuts, play on giant slides and ropes, hang out inside a giant computer, and more.

Video by Dan Taibbi

A fisheye panorama showing the maze’s position in Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley, with the Connecticut River and Sugarloaf Mountain behind it

A close-up drone shot, showing the rows of corn.

The “Drinking” maze set in Fit, used for beer tastings.

The maze as viewed from a biplane.

Designer Jess Marsh and farmer David Wissemann walk through the interior of the maze.

Me, helping out (a little) to define the edge of Fit’s A crossbar

A drone’s view of Jess Marsh, David Wissemann, and me standing inside of a recently-cleared counterform of Fit’s A.

Our view of the drone, hovering over the cornfield. Sugarloaf Mountain is visible in the distance.

The counterform of Fit’s A, shortly after clearing.

Maze founder Mike Wissemann and designer Jess Marsh with their thinking caps on. (Jess’s new one uses Lab DJR)

A giant computer complete with keyboard and mouse stands next to the eastern edge of the maze.

This project studies the cult of Vithoba. It was made as a student project for my Master’s in Information Design at India's main design college, the National Institute of Design.

From Wikipedia:

Vithoba, also known as Vi(t)thal(a) and Panduranga, is a Hindu deity predominantly worshipped in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Karnataka. He is generally considered as a manifestation of the god Vishnu, or his avatar Krishna.

The temple of Vithoba at Pandharpur is dedicated to Lord Krishna under the name of Vithoba or Viththala. It is one of the many places in India which attracts thousands of pilgrims every year. These pilgrims are referred to as Warkari, i.e. “those who perform the Wari. It is –

a sampradaya (religious movement) within the bhakti spiritual tradition of Hinduism, geographically associated with the Indian state of Maharashtra. Warkaris worship Vitthal (also known as Vithoba), the presiding deity of Pandharpur, regarded as a form of Krishna.

Shown here is my digital documentation made for an interactive kiosk, to be shown in the actual place of the cultural center. For the headlines, I used Fit (DJR, 2017) by David Jonathan Ross including Kimya Gandhi’s script extension Fit Devanagari (Mota Italic, 2022) for the text in Marathi. It’s combined with Helvetica Now (Monotype, 2019) for text.

See Behance for more images, including the prototype of that kiosk, which is super extensive and self-navigable.

Ultima Floración is the latest EP of Arcane Prospect, an electronic music (techno) project that seeks to reflect the ephemeral but beautiful melancholy that constant life has. In order to express this feeling I used Arachne that, thanks to its serifs, reflects the melancholy. I modified it, turning it into a more vertically extended version that will occupy the entire format to signify a statement of this moment. At the same time a superposition of the letters u and f set in Sword will generate a relationship with the Artificio record label which produced the record. On the back a composition using Telegraf and Fit adds an interesting contrast by dividing each of the songs.

In 2021 several aspects of the Hungarian Irodalmi Magazin (“Literary Magazine”) went through a redesign: the cover layout, the typefaces and the logotype. All issues released since 2020 got redesigned with the new logotype and cover layout.

The new logotype was made with the Riviera Nights typeface. The running text uses Piazzolla, a typeface in variable font format made specifically for print media and publications. The healthy contrast between these two is one of the main foundations of the brand identity.

The cover for the 1920/2020 issue was exhibited at the XXII. National Graphic Design Biennial of Hungary. It was designed with Fit, a variable font designed by David Jonathan Ross.

Illustration polyptych by Yerevan-based design studio Kolektiv Design Room, headed by creative directors Siranush Danielyan and Tigran Artenyan. It was featured in the November 2019 issue of Evnmag – dedicated to vinyl culture in Armenia, from the Soviet-era to the present.

The illustrations panels highlight Soviet symbols and Armenian folklore including Мелодия (Melodiya), the major record company of the USSR, and the Legend of Akhtamar. The words “Мелодия” “ՍՈՎԵՏ” (Soviet) on the left and “ՖԻՐՄԱ” on the right appear to be hand-lettered.

The central figure is record collector, ԳՈՒՐԳԵՆ ԽԱՆՋՅԱՆ (Gurgen Khanjyan), whose name is fitted into the layout using a hand-drawn version of Fit Armenian by Gor Jihanian.

The title, ՎԻՆԻԼԸ ՍՈՎԵՏՈՒՄ. «ԴԱ ՈՐՍ ԷՐ», and subhead of the article are set in Montserrat Armenian by Vahan Hovhannisyan.

The small serif type on the top of the page is Arek by Khajag Apelian – see also this post about the use of Arek in a previous post about the magazine.

Hunger was realized for a course in typography at the Bauer institute in Milan, Italy. The main requirement of the course was the realization of a magazine and its masthead. As regards to the masthead, it was designed in view of the subject and contents of the magazine, and the lettering was produced using the Glyphs app. The main idea behind Hunger was to design a magazine about food and travel. Each issue of the magazine woud be dedicated to a specific city in the world, to its food and to the link between the food and its local culture.

The magazine covers the topic ranging from local street food to a Michelin-starred restaurant. The contents of the magazine were organized following a flat plan divided in five sections as there are five human senses. Each of the senses covers one aspect related to the food (smell=street food; sight=Michelin stars restaurants; taste=local food, etc.). The target audience of the magazine is young and curious.

As regards the masthead, the intent was to create something that was in contrast with the actual meaning of the word “hunger”. That’s why I decided to create a lettering that is excessively bold. At the same time, the choice of the word “hunger” emphasizes the connection between food and culture , as if the magazine was created in order to satisfy people's “hunger for culture”.

The typeface used on the cover for “Copenhagen” is Fit by David Jonathan Ross, modified with roof-like tops as a reference to the architecture of the houses in Copenhagen. Fit, in fact, was born from the idea of filling the space with maximum impact, just like the fascinating Danish architecture. Inside the editorial, GT Walsheim by Noël Leu is used for titles, and texts and captions are set in Lexicon by Bram de Does. The graphic language was envisioned as a translation of the Danish character and dynamics. The combination of GT Walsheim and the more classical Lexicon creates tensions and games of innovation and tradition. The readability of the Lexicon also makes editorial articles easy to read.

Suburbs Are Dead is my small photo project. On the site I use Fit for headlines and TT Travels for the rest of the text.

It may be the secret fantasy of every tote bag designer to have a typeface that fits exactly the ratio of the panel and can produce a graphic as much as it does text. On this 50th-anniversary bag for Verso Books — “the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world” — Fit fits the bill! The typeface is a variable font that can grow (up to 3600% in either X or Y direction) to fit nearly any space.

Longsleeve shirt released by Mythical Entertainment, web-content company owned by YouTube music and comedy duo Rhett & Link, who gained mainstream fame mostly for their weekday-morning unscripted talk show Good Mythical Morning.

It's been interesting to see them branch out into merchandise not directly related to their content and experiment with more streetwear-style clothing, and it's also been interesting to see more and more typography creep in as it has throughout cutting-edge fashion.

Le Murmure, from Velvetyne, makes a nice appearance here and the word “Mythical” lets it show off its distinctive terminals. The forced variable width applied to the side text (now identified as Syne Extra by the desiger, thanks Caleb!) is … an interesting choice that works a lot better on the R than the W. The small green serif (in which “Creativity Through Curiosity Since” is set) appears to be Avara, another nice Velvetyne pick. Fit lives up to its name and gives this highly neu-grunge design the requisite outlined bold type.

Overall, pretty fun design, and sleeve prints are especially hot right now. I’d love to know where they sourced the central illustration.

The shirt in action, from a recent episode of Good Mythical Morning.

Pretty good bit.

The identity for this year’s Festival de Arte Urbano in Monterrey was created by AboutDesign. As they describe it:

The Festival de Arte Urbano in La Purísima is an event that serves as a meeting point of the urban culture that springs from one of the oldest and most iconic neighborhoods in Monterrey. Activities range from traditional food tasting, music, mural interventions with a diverse array of painting techniques and more.

Our solution was to make an illustration comprised of symbolic features of the neighborhood that conveyed the sense of community and art of the place, unified with a bold typography that showed the essence of street art.

Large text set in Fit acts as an illustration, filled with lively and colorful patterns depicting the food, visual art, and music that are central to the festival. (I am psyched to see the designers employing multiple widths of Fit on the same line!) Monument Grotesk works well as a nice counterpoint, providing some much-needed legibility for titles and supporting text.

Arkkitehtipäivät (Architecture Days) is an annual architecture seminar held by SAFA, the Finnish Association of Architects. The 2019 event took place in May and included 350 architects and architecture aficionados.

Designer and illustrator Sofia Pusa created the identity for this year’s event, featuring Fit in bold displays and Graphik Wide and Graphik Condensed for supporting text. Pusa describes her process:

The theme of the 2019 event was Kuri ja järjestys (Discipline and Order). I really loved how the Fit typeface made the words kuri (discipline) and järjestys (order) look like brutalist architecture and a condensed city, which made it a perfect match for the branding concept.

As Fit’s designer, it is incredibly rewarding for me to see Pusa take full advantage of the typeface’s blocky, architectural forms and set it at monumental sizes. The words in Fit act like illustrations, contrasting the otherwise-sparse design with bursts of complexity. I also really dig the colors.

Covers

Elvin Hu designed this book series of printed scripts from popular musicals as an unpublished student project.

Hu approached series from the perspective of a book buyer: “When someone buys a script book, they either love theatre scripts, they have a favorite show in mind, or they are buying it because their professor or director told them to.” He wondered if he could design a unified series where readers could easily spot the script they are looking for, even when all the books look essentially alike.

His solution was to fill the cover with the initial letter of each title. Using colors from each show’s original branding, he was able to give each script some sense of individuality while have them fit nicely into the larger visual system.

When it came to choosing a typeface for these gigantic initials, Hu says, “Fit became an obvious choice because of its versatility and eye-catching design when used as at a large scale.” Fit is also used to set the title on the back cover, with words sometimes split to create interesting text shapes.

Meanwhile, FF DIN is used in all the places where actual legible text is needed: the titles and themselves, the spines, as well as author names and supplemental text on the back cover.

Hu also gave the covers an intentional slightly-worn look, a nod to the many pirated photocopied scripts on the market.

Back covers

Spines

Wicked, front cover

Wicked, back cover

Dear Evan Hansen, front cover

Dear Evan Hansen, back cover

Rent, front cover

Rent, back cover

Next to Normal, front cover

Next to Normal, back cover

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, front cover

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, back cover

Exhibition poster.

In this type-only design for Daniel Buren’s exhibition at the STUDIO theater in Warsaw, designer Kuki Krzysztof Iwanski takes advantage of type and scale to deliver an impactful poster with little more than the artist’s name.

“Buren” stands front and center in the design, occupying nearly the entire height of the poster, and allowing my typeface Fit to live up to its name and fit itself to the available space. Du Nord supports the design with the exhibition title and supporting text in the brochure.

I was especially excited to see the banners hanging between the theater’s columns, where both first and last name occupy the same width.

Thanks to Julien Priez for bringing this to my attention!

Banners hanging above the entrance to the STUDIO theater.

The exhibition catalog.

With bold colors and even bolder type choices, designer Matteo Di Iorio has created a lively and distinctive line of beer labels for London brewer Yeast17.

This playful approach to packaging seems to be a good fit for the brand: the brewery’s name is a play on the 1990s boy band East17, and the beer names are puns: Grain Damage, The Beery of Everything, etc. On the labels, these beer names are transformed into giant textures, set in Fit (and without word spaces!), daring the interested beer drinker to try to solve the puzzle.

The logo and all supplemental text are set in Colophon’s Space Mono. The type in the logo is customized with a few of the letters rotated, underscoring Yeast17’s irreverent style.

Di Iorio explains his type choices:

The wordmark design embodies the playful spirit of Yeast17 brand with rotated letters and its idiosyncratic custom designed typeface. The visual research leads to the creation of a bold and vibrant colour palette reflecting the pop culture of their naming along side the usage of the uncompromising and unmistakable typeface Fit. The typeface adapts its forms to the space within the label limits, in this way the beer’s names become a graphic property in itself creating different patterns for each beer. The result is a new visual expression that is distinctive on the store shelves and that embodies the soul of Yeast17: ironic, pop, anti-boring, bold and playful.

I am always impressed when folks find a use for my typeface Fit, and even more impressed when clients sign off on it!

DiaTipo São Paulo 2017. Event poster.

DiaTipo São Paulo is the biggest type conference in Brazil. The identity for the 2017 edition explores the concepts of “expansion” and “variation”, inspired by the event’s theme “um novo olhar” (“a new regard”). The huge amount of widths in DJR’s Fit typeface was perfect for the job. It was paired with dT Jakob by Gustavo Soares/DooType.

Organizational team and identity co-creators: Julio Giacomelli, Fabrícia Ribeiro, Damien Levaton, Filipe Negrão, Joyce Melguiso
Website: Filipe Negrão [Estúdio Analógico]
See more images on my Behance page.

DiaTipo São Paulo 2017. T-shirt.

DiaTipo São Paulo 2017. Bags.

DiaTipo São Paulo 2017. Badges.

Inimigo Público (“Public Enemy”) is a series of political protest and memory wheatpaste posters. In an electoral year (2018), probably the most challenging for Brazil in recent years, it's very important to remember who said what and who has already clearly stood against the people. Every list is an edition, this is ours.

The first part of the series, produced by Vertentes Coletivo, consists of four posters. They present João Dória Jr. ("Poor people have no food habit"), Geraldo Alckmin ("There's no shortage of water in São Paulo"), Michel Temer ("We need to keep it going"), and Jair Bolsonaro ("I won't rape you because you don't deserve it").

Their words are framed in big and sturdy straight quotes, with the quote's source set in smaller type below it. Both quote and source are set in Clarendon. The background is pack-jammed with large letters forming the words Inimigo Publico, set in David Jonathan Ross’s typeface Fit.

The posters are being spread all over the streets of São Paulo.

“There’s no shortage of water in São Paulo”

“I don't rape you because you don’t deserve it”

“Poor people have no food habit”

“We need to keep it going”

Street Photography Now is an art project done in collaboration with artist Dedeia Rocha. It's a fake-spy-book for taking pictures without being noticed.

The typeface Fit by David Jonathan Ross is just perfect for a fully typographic cover. The fact that it is not immediately legible helps preserve the subliminal irony contained in the title. It was used to attract the attention of passersby and hopefully get a good shot of them. Also, its avenue-like lines and curves fit perfectly with the street environment (do forgive me, it’s hard to avoid puns with this typeface’s name).

—

Street Photography Now is also the title of a great book by Sophie Howarth. This project was developed with no commercial intentions and therefore no copyright infringement intended.