We loved spotting our Greycliff CF in the pages – and pixels – of Allerhande, the free magazine of Albert Heijn, of the major supermarkets in the Netherlands. Since November 2017 it has been used for the magazine and related socials and products, alongside Quadraat by Fred Smeijers and an ever-changing selection of guest typefaces.

Greycliff CF brings friendly strength and rock-solid clarity to every page and post. Built on the legacy of classic sans serifs, it takes inspiration from mid-century design’s clean, honest geometry, updated with soft corners and humanist touches that make it warm and welcoming. With a wide range of weights, matching italics, and excellent language support, it’s a workhorse with personality – ideal for branding, editorial, packaging, and more. In print, it’s bold and grounded; on screen, it’s crisp and easy to read. No wonder it fits so naturally into Allerhande’s vibrant and accessible voice!

The summer issue, June 2025, features Rift Soft as a guest typeface

Spread from the June 2025 issue. Body text is set in Quadraat, while headlines use Greycliff and Rift Soft.

Cover for March/April 2019. The all caps brush typeface is Brush Up.

Spread from a 2019 issue, with body text set in Quadraat.

End-of-year issue 2018

Spread from the first issue of Allerhande using Greycliff CF, November 2017

TT Fors has become part of A101 Hadi’s corporate identity.

A101 Hadi is Turkey’s largest supermarket, where you can find everything from basic necessities to home appliances at pleasant prices.

Go Asia is an Asian grocery store with branches across Germany. For one of its prominent flagship stores, design agency KleinS has re-worked the navigation system of the Stuttgart branch, featuring JAF Bernina Sans for Latin type, paired with 思源黒体 (Source Han Sans) for Simplified Chinese.

More information on the rebranding can be found on the designers’ website.

We made an eclectic type palette for Peralta Supermercados, a chain of supermarkets in Brazil.

The simplicity of Pacaembu for text, paired with giant Acme Gothic and Graúna for punch and prices. Verveine serves as a soft, hand drawn counterpart to complete the set.

Scale and punch go hand in hand with supermarket visual communication. This one sets an active yet not as in-your-face retail tone.

See the full case study including detailed credits on Behance.

Packaging design for 500 grams of deep-frozen pre-fried French fries, from the visual archives of Stichting Albert Heijn Erfgoed. This foundation is dedicated to preserving the heritage of leading Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn, and to make it accessible to interested parties.

The bottom-heavy script is Charade. According to Canadian type designer and historian Rod McDonald, it was designed by Toronto-based artist Al Elliott (1922–1978) and released in the late 1960s or early 1970s by Headliners. It was copied by Castcraft as Gaston Agency and also adopted by Formatt for dry transfer lettering as Gaston, both before 1978. Brandywine Bold is another alias. Here it’s used in the Shadow style, with terminal swashes added to both words.

Stichting Albert Heijn Erfgoed dates this own-brand design to “approximately 1966”. Now is this an early use of Charade? Possible, but somehow I doubt that it goes back so far. I can imagine that it’s rather from the early 1970s, and the reason why it was dated ca. 1966 is simply because of the presence of the Albert Heijn logo: the now iconic ah monogram was designed by James Pilditch of Allied Industrial Designers (AID), London and introduced in 1966. So far, the earliest reliably dated in-use example for Charade in our – admittedly modest – collection is from 1973.

Abandoned building and all-purpose metaphor in Bainbridge, NY (via Jesse Reed).

Great American is the name of a chain of grocery stores in Upstate New York. The logo is probably from around 1980 [edit: it goes back to at least 1974, see comments]. It’s based on Neil Bold, a photo typeface originally designed by Wayne Stettler in 1966 and released by VGC. The i dot was dropped and the hairlines thickened up.

From a 2018 article by Big Chuck Asks:

Eventually Great American felt the squeezes from the Price Choppers and Hannafords and other big box stores and they too went under. They had nearly 80 stores in Upstate New York at one time. That number dwindled as financial pressures became more severe. They entered bankruptcy proceedings in 1995.

After the financial debacle, the Great American stores began dropping like flies all over Upstate New York. In one year alone, from 1995 to 1996, Oneonta, Binghamton and New Berlin lost all of their stores. Norwich felt a big blow as the supermarket headquarters there shuttered. Today, what was once an embarrassment of riches for my little hometown, has now turned to rust. The Bainbridge Great American has been boarded up for years.

Flickr user drpep has images from back in 2009, when the stores in Bainbridge, Afton, and Unadilla were still open. See also this thread on Groceteria for more info about Great American.

ShopRite’s Fresh to Table concept stores are store-within-a-store solutions where customers can find fresh and balanced meal solutions in a variety of flexible grab-and-go formats or easy-to-prepare lunches.

Brand strategy agency Lippincott not only came up with the concept and brand positioning but also designed the visual identity going along with the stores. They used SangBleu OG Sans as the main typeface, signaling shop sections and addressing direct quotes to the customer. It is combined either with Interstate or Benton Sans depending on the situation. Script typeface Beyond Infinity, echoing the style of Shoprite’s logo, is sometimes used to add a bit of manual flavour to the composition.

SangBleu OG Sans is part of the SangBleu OG typeface, available from Swiss Typefaces.

Right Grotesk is the new 7-Eleven brand typeface following their recent redesign by Deutsch LA. From the Behance case presentation:

There is a 7-Eleven® store at approximately every 10 miles of all Americans, it's a brand that is part of their everyday lives. At Deutsch Los Angeles, we revised the visual identity for the overarching brand taking into consideration important findings from the strategy, the research over the competition, the category and consumer inputs. The updated design brings a slight revision to the logo for digital spaces, a new primary font and reinforce the importance of the unique 3 colored stripes.

Taking visual cues from the 7-Eleven history and recognizing the importance of the equity the logo carries, we added a modern twist to enable 7-Eleven's to continue it's cultural relevance.

On the website, Roboto is used as secondary typeface for smaller text.

The book Donos do Mercado (“Owners of the market”) by João Peres & Victor Matioli – from the website O Joio e o Trigo – tells how supermarket chains Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar grew so much in Brazil that they managed to form a total duopoly; how the state allowed this to happen; and what impacts this gigantism brings to consumers and suppliers, and to their nearly 200.000 employees. This book/report unravels the strategies, and shows that the highest price is not on the shelves.

Arquivo was commissioned by Editora Elefante editors Tadeu Breda and Bianca Oliveira to design the cover. We chose Rubik, using its regular width and the monospaced version – the same fonts that are used on the O Joio e Trigo website. A set of abstract geometric shapes is used for the illustration that refers directly to the logos of the supermarket companies analyzed in the book. The two green semicircles allude to Grupo Pão de Açúcar and the blue and red triangles refer to the brand of the French multinational Carrefour.

The book presents these elements on a white background in an attempt to refer to plastic supermarket bags that are very common in Brazil and also to guarantee a better reproduction of the same spot colors used by supermarkets.

We are therefore looking for a cover with an impact to stand out in the bookstore while making a diffuse reference to the supermarkets criticized in the work.

This double-page ad by The Market Shelf Inc., New York was published in Life magazine’s issue from 21 November 1969. It uses a number of interesting typefaces from the phototype era.

“The Market Shelf” is in Bethany. This face is shown in a single black upright style in Lettergraphics’ 1976 catalog, together with the italic Parker Connie, which is an adaptation of Resolut (Nebiolo, 1937) with closed stencil bridges. Bethany is not yet listed in the Letter-Fan from 1969, indicating that this ad represents an early use. The words are set on a wavy baseline, demonstrating the (then relatively new) possibilities of distorting the letterforms with the use of lenses. There is no digital version of Bethany, but the heavy weight of Nashville – another adaptation and expansion of Resolut that originated at Brendel / Typeshop – comes close.

The display type in blue features two more typefaces from Lettergraphics. The condensed sans with high contrast at the top right is Radius. The other, even narrower sans is Bailey, one of the earliest releases by the phototype company from Culver City, California.

Detail. “Hey, Girls …” appears to be a lighter phototype variant of Grotesque No. 9, set in four curved lines.

Detail. The compressed sans used for “will send you … in cash!” is Bailey Light Condensed with its alternate a and s. The price is probably handlettered. Filmotype Wave is a similar face with such tiny serifs. “Buy these fine products” uses extrabold Helvetica caps.

Prices use Cheltenham, product descriptions are in News Gothic or similar.

Detail. The blue headline features caps from Radius. This family is shown in Lettergraphics’ 1968 catalog in 16 styles.

Source: nypost.com Christopher Sadowski. License: All Rights Reserved.

Dom Bold and Agenda.

Fairway Market is a chain of grocery stores in the New York metropolitan area. From Wikipedia:

Founded in 1933, it expanded in the New York area in the 21st century, with 15 grocery stores plus 4 liquor stores in the tri-state area as of August 2018. The flagship store remains at Broadway and West 74th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Their visual identity is not exactly consistent, and has seen several changes over the past few years.

Perhaps referencing the long history of the sign painter’s brush script in U.S. grocery signs, the logo used on the store shown above is in yellow caps from Dom Bold, horizontally stretched and with added drop shadow, against a green background. The casual unconnected brush script easily withstands some amount of stretching, in this case a little more than 120%.

The slogan “Like No Other Market” sometimes is rendered in a mechanically extended brush script, too. In the photo below, the font in use possibly is the lighter Dom Casual. Here, with less chunky letters and in title case, the distortion is more problematic – at least the e looks somewhat pained. Other signs use the similar Impress. The setting with lowercase letters is also more revealing of the typefaces’ age. (Dom Casual goes back to the early 1950s when ATF adopted a film face originally drawn by Peter Dom for Photo-Lettering, Inc.; Impress is a digital version of Filmotype Prima which was first offered in 1955.) This may have been the motivation to replace the slogan typography with something more contemporary. The photo above shows “Like No Other Market” in Greg Thompson’s Agenda (1993), in all caps and without quote marks. The tapering red underline was maintained.

Source: www.flickr.com Jules Antonio (edited). License: CC BY-SA.

Dom Bold and Dom Casual (?), stretched. Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2012.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Top: The Fairway logo with slogan. Bottom: Recreation with stretched and respaced glyphs, featuring ① Dom Bold, ② Dom Casual, and ③ Impress (all by Bitstream).

Apparently this update still didn’t look modern enough. The Fairway website shows the latest logo version, in white on black. It’s not a drastic redesign, but a cautious revision. Dom Bold had to make way for a more recent typeface from the same genre, Ahkio.

Source: www.fairwaymarket.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Ahkio Bold (modified) and Neutraface.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Ahkio Bold (top) compared to the current Fairway logo (bottom)

Designed by Mika Melvas, it was released in 2014 in five weights. Ahkio is slightly inclined, adding a welcome sense of movement to the wordmark. The Bold weight already had the right weight and width. Some changes were deemed necessary, though: the bar in F was raised and shortened – maybe to mitigate the near crash with the protruding A bar – and crosses the stem; and the leg of R curves forward. While the apex of A was cleaned up, the opposite approach was chosen for W, with offset strokes that emphasize the handmade look. The slogan underneath now is set in caps from another sans serif, Neutraface by Christian Schwartz. Both typefaces are used for the Fairway website, too. The newest logo has the most professional appeal, but also borders on the slick.

Source: www.flickr.com Adam Kuban. License: CC BY-NC-ND.

The original Fairway store at Broadway and West 74th Street (see Google Street View) in 2008. Zoom in to spot two more typefaces from the same genre as Dom & Co.: Benguiat Frisky and Balloon are used for “Fresh cut flowers”.

Source: www.flickr.com Patrick Rasenberg. License: CC BY-NC.

The same store in 2012, shortly before the redesign was implemented. The banners at the top already show Dom Bold in stacked caps.

Until around 2012, Fairway used yet another logo version, in yellow caps on a blue background. It’s not clear to me if these letterforms are typographic or custom made. The closest typeface I’m aware of is McCullagh, which has a similar boldness and tall proportions, and shares three of its key characteristics: the high-waisted F, the asymmetrical W, and, most notably, the low-waisted R with a flat and vertically cut leg. The old Fairway logo looks like a sans-serif adaptation of McCullagh, but I can’t rule out that the similarities are just coincidental. This variant scores high in terms of uniqueness. On the other hand, it’s maybe too obviously rooted in the past. The red and black outlines and the gradient fill add to the nostalgic, sign-painterly charm.

While the slogan here is set in caps from Univers Bold, the web address below doesn’t follow suit: It’s the system font Arial, which makes this line look like a belated and thoughtless addition.

License: All Rights Reserved.

The Fairway logo on the original store (top) compared to McCollough, a digital version of McCullagh (bottom).

Source: www.flickr.com Zach Korb. License: CC BY-NC.

A large painted version of the old logo with outline, spotted underneath the Riverside Drive Viaduct, Harlem, in 2017. The awning at the left shows the version in Dom Bold, with the slogan in yet another bold grotesk, here in title case with straight quotes.

A modern day Publix. The company has started to give the letters in their logo a very wide spacing, which I see as a poor choice.

Sometime in 1972, Florida-based grocery chain rolled out a new branding system. The color green would stay but a new wordmark debuted that's actually still in use to this day. Six letters of Blippo Bold, the letter p has actually been re-purposed as an uppercase. The spacing started out tight and has loosened over the years. The corporate design department at Publix has been using other Universal-influenced designs to compliment the logo over the years.

Photo of a store opening in the late 1970s.

Not too sure of this font (if it is one). The g and i don’t match characters from Blippo Bold. “Where shopping is a pleasure” has been Publix’s slogan off and on for over 60 years. It was coined by Bill Schroter, Director of Advertising, in 1954.

The slogan looks to use a few styles of Harry.

Publix facilities in Lakeland, FL feature a water tower with a birthday cake top. You can see it at 3223 New Tampa Hwy, Lakeland, FL.

Zoo in use for the identity of Sip/Snack, a convenience shop for organic and sustainable food located in Los Angeles.

Umtüten produces stylish bags to reduce disposable packaging in daily routine. Made from recycled organic cotton and produced fair plus locally, these silkscreen printed bags minimize waste while at bakery, unpackaged goods store or to carry your lunch.

Sharing the same co-working space in Kiel (Germany) as TypeMates’ Nils, Anja Kromer and Christina Lehmann got a free licence of Cera Pro for their honourable venture for sure. For their logo, Umtüten use Magneton by Mika Melvas.

Nice to see Tenez in use for the packaging of premium potatoes as designed by Moodley for MPreis, an Austrian supermarket chain.

The loosely spaced all caps setting in combination with a more neutral sans (not sure what the sans is … Akzidenz Grotesk? Benton?) gives this commodity an air of elegance. Also, the detail with “2 KG, No 1” is well-crafted, adding more life to the center axis of the design. Of course, the lowered O in Kartoffel (“potato”) is also a witty take on the product name.

Project management & consulting: Sabrina Dojlidko
Creative direction: Mike Fuisz
Art direction: Marie Pierer
Graphic design: Marie Pierer, Kristina Kurre

Sole365’s brand typefaces present an unusual choice for a supermarket chain. The South Italian company combines (URW) Bauer Bodoni, Poster Bodoni, and T-Star. Poster Bodoni belongs to the Fat Face genre. It appears for “365” in the logo, and is also used for in-store signs, on the website, and in ads.

Illustration by Ilaria Grimaldi

Illustration by Ilaria Grimaldi

The frames for the featured items in this supermarket ad are quite unusual. It's possible that they are a set of metal border elements, but they don’t appear in ATF’s, Linotype’s, or Ludlow’s catalogs, who were the main suppliers for American newspapers at the time. They could also be custom engravings.

The May 1, 1958 issue of the Oxnard Press-Courier includes these ads for four supermarkets in Ventura County, California. The ads use many of the same fonts, suggesting they were produced at the same printer, probably the newspaper itself. This was common practice in the pre-digital era, especially for small businesses in small towns.

I salute the anonymous typesetter(s) at work here. They employ a variety of low-fi methods for grabbing attention and organizing information. Note the liberal use of rules and squiggly borders, the giant ‘1’ for Big T and Asahi Markets, the huge size contrast between numbers and units (lbs, cans, bunches), and the bursts for the Oxnard Produce Market.

Some of the typefaces used throughout the newspaper (and these ads) are Franklin Gothic Condensed, Metro No. 2, and Erbar-Grotesk Bold Condensed. Tempo, a very common choice for mid-century American newspapers, appears in the La Perla ad (e.g. “EGGS”). The largest type, used for many of the figures, is likely wood type and difficult to identify. Hamilton’s Plain Gothic No. 6243 appears to be one of them.

“Zin in Zomer” magazine, table of contents. Art direction and design by De Ontwerpers.

Omnes is the corporate font used by some regional branches of global retailer SPAR. This post documents its use in the Netherlands, the country where SPAR has its origins.

The sans serif from Darden Studio is employed throughout the visual identity, from the website to ads, customer magazines, and in-store signage. SPAR’s designers adroitly use it in a range of contrasting sizes and in playful arrangements. Together with the bright colors and well-curated photography, Omnes helps to build a brand language that signals both good value and high quality.

Discount coupons

Detail of a page in a leaflet advertising special offers. SPAR uses a customized version of Omnes where the alternate “long-nosed” figure 1 has been made the default.

The website uses Omnes for all text — from headlines and teasers to menus, buttons, body copy, and small print. It does so with three weights; Regular, Medium, and SemiBold.

“Eet smakelijk!” (Enjoy your meal!) – cover of a magazine with recipes.

Ad for regional produce, with the headline referencing the Dutch national colors.