Birra Bruin is the typeface chosen to promote this year’s Kærleikskúlan. The Christmas bauble for 2020 was created by Finnbogi Pétursson and is titled ÞÖGN (“Silence”).

The blackletter-inspired shapes of Birra Bruin add a festive, slightly arcane tone to the web posters. Designer Erla Anna says she chose the typeface because it reminded her “of old Icelandic calligraphy pages and has a great personality and warmth”. The single-weight italic was designed by Elena Schneider and released as the second installment in the Birra Flight of fonts. Like all Birra fonts, it’s available free of charge from Darden Studio.

Kærleikskúlan (“Ball of Love”) is an initiative by the Icelandic Association of the Paralyzed and Disabled. Each year, the non-profit organization invites an artist to design a special jólakúlur, or Christmas bauble. Many people love to collect the Kærleikskúlurnar. They come in a limited edition which is sold during the Advent season, with all proceeds going to the benefit of disabled children and young people.

Artist Finnbogi Pétursson explains the idea behind his glass bauble:

The love ball contains one meter of audio tape, which is the equivalent of one second of silence. The recording was made at Arnarstapi in the summer of 1986 between three and four o’clock at night. There I met the moment when everything was silent; the birds, the sea, the wind, the rolls – the flies. The moment when nature resets itself, there will be sound and a new day will dawn.

Birra Bruin not only supports Extended Latin including the characters needed for typesetting Icelandic, it also “speaks” Vietnamese.