Founded in 1988, The Onion remains one of the most recognizable satirical news outlets in the world. Its visual design cleverly mirrors that of a traditional newspaper—anchored by its choice of type—giving it a real sense of newsy legitimacy.

Headlines are set in Rocky Compressed, designed by Matthew Carter and available from Carter & Cone. Carter’s long association with newspaper typography makes this choice especially fitting, giving the digital publication a confident, print-like presence.

Tablet Gothic Condensed and Semi-Condensed, designed by José Scaglione and Veronika Burian, foundry partners at TypeTogether, appear in subheads and smaller section titles. This crisp, space-saving sans serif family acts as a good visual foil for the two serif families.

Body copy uses Utopia, designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe and their Adobe Originals program, providing a balanced, readable serif ideal for long-form journalism—real or imagined.

The logo is based on Eagle, David Berlow’s interpretation and expansion of ATF’s Eagle Bold, with modifications.

In a time when real news can feel stranger than satire, The Onion’s typographic choices reinforce its role as both parody and institution.

Various pages viewed through a narrower viewport demonstrates that the typography holds up even on smaller devices.

RT Alias Rough Regular in great use for the navigation on David Herren’s personal website showcasing his projects. From the About page:

David Herren (b. 1984) is a visual artist currently based in Lucerne, Switzerland. In his work, Herren questions the role of living beings in relation to a technologized environment and explores resulting phenomena. He examines systems on the brink of instability by modeling processes with information from databases—or by developing recursive machines evoking human inadequacies in their behavior. Herren's artistic practice reflects ideologies in social and personal contexts, and he is always concerned with his own entanglement in the world.

The text typeface is Univers Next.

Homepage. See ystrdy.nz for image attributions.

Yesterday* is a curated collection of immersive large-scale prints from the photographic archives of New Zealand.

We use a combination of Mānuka Black and Mānuka Slab by Klim Type Foundry as our headline fonts. Mānuka Slab is primary used for product names and locations. Mikhail Sharanda’s Manrope is used for UI and information copy.

Category carousel. See ystrdy.nz for image attributions.

Navigation. See ystrdy.nz for image attributions.

Product page. See ystrdy.nz for image attributions.

Related content. See ystrdy.nz for image attributions.

About us page

The asterisk in the logo acknowledges the artists and archives who inspired us to start Yesterday*.

The website of nail artist Kim Cao was designed by Private Yard, using Scope throughout.

Source: portfolio.amir.cloud License: All Rights Reserved.

Mobile views of the website

Halyard by Darden Studio is the typeface used for the visual identity of ISIA Urbino.

ISIA Urbino is a graphic design and visual communication school in central Italy. Set up in 1962, the school became an Instituto Superiore per Industrie Artistiche (Institute of Higher Education in the Artistic Industries) in 1974. Today, ISIA offers a three-year degree program in Graphic Design and Visual Communication and three M.A. programs in Communication, Design and Publishing; Cultural Heritage Photography; and Illustration.

ZeroDotZero was entrusted with designing a new identity for the school. The studio from The Hague settled on Halyard Display as the primary typeface. For the website – the school’s central tool of communication – ZeroDotZero collaborated with software architect and developer Amir Houieh. The web platform uses free online tools as CMS: editors create the content using Google Docs, Sheets, Calendar etc. and upload it to Google Drive, which is then processed and exposed publicly via two APIs. All text is rendered in a single font, Halyard Display’s Book weight.

For other applications like announcements, event posters and social media graphics, ISIA Urbino uses a wider range of styles from the Halyard series, including bolder weights from Halyard Display as well as Halyard Text. The new identity was launched in April 2020.

Concept and design: Maaike Besseling, Thomas Castro, Michiel Terpelle
Identity implementation: Maloe Brinkman, Thomas Castro, Jurrit van der Ploeg

Source: portfolio.amir.cloud License: All Rights Reserved.

Website with news, events, showcases and more, arranged in five columns. The letters that make up the school’s name wrap around the margin, serving as a toggle to access the institutional information.

Source: portfolio.amir.cloud License: All Rights Reserved.

The institutional info about the school’s history, its organization, staff, workshops etc. is presented in white on black.

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

License: All Rights Reserved.

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

Social media post featuring Halyard Display’s default Q. The font includes a second form with a diagonal bar, alongside many other alternates.

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

The 16th edition of Premio Nazionale delle Arti, Design, was held at ISIA Urbino from September 29 to October 1, 2022.

Source: isiaurbino.net License: All Rights Reserved.

A selection of thesis projects by ISIA students was exhibited at Polycopies, a photo publishing festival organized every year on the occasion of Paris Photo.

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

Halyard Display SemiBold for ISIA U’s Open Day 2023

Source: isiaurbino.net License: All Rights Reserved.

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

Program details for the ISIA U Training Days 2023

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

Source: isiaurbino.net License: All Rights Reserved.

Halyard Text for announcing ISIA U’s participation in the Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2023

Reyner Banham inserts the Baede-Kar tape into his car’s audio system

Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles is a documentary produced by the BBC in 1972. The viewer follows Reyner Banham, professor of architecture at University College London, as he tours the “four ecologies” of Los Angeles – Surfurbia (beach), Foothills (basin), The Plains of Id (foothills), and Autopia (freeways) – by automobile. [AHBE LAB]

Gemini Computer is used for the fictional tape-based “Baede-Kar” navigation/tour system (a play on the Baedecker travel guides) that helps to organize the narrative of the film .

Halyard is the brand typeface of FIT NYC and is used across the college’s visual communication.

Founded in 1944, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is part of the State University of New York (SUNY). The public college focuses on design, fashion, business, and technology. Pentagram partner Eddie Opara and his team developed a new brand system which was rolled out in fall 2018. FIT’s typography guidelines detail the reasons for the typeface selection:

Halyard from Darden Studio provides both a carefully crafted design as well as exceptional legibility and visual quality, especially effective for longer body compositions at smaller sizes and in digital environments such as websites and PowerPoint/Keynote presentations.

Apart from Halyard being an all-purpose font, it is empathetic and uncomplicated while also presenting a staunch-yet-playful disposition.

Halyard is employed in all of its three sub-familes; Micro, Text, and Display; largely replacing the previously used Bureau Grotesque. True to its tagline, “Nurturing Unconventional Minds”, FIT employs the size-specific styles in original ways:

Three weights have been selected from the Micro and Text families, and they can be used in combination or separately depending on the composition and desired emphasis of content.

Halyard Micro is used for display text and headlines; Halyard Text is used for longer running copy in denser, text-heavy publications and in business cards.

The logo (shown above) features Halyard Text Regular for the full name, combined with the FIT button in Bureau Grotesque, designed by Michael Bierut in 1999.

Headline on the FIT website, contrasting Halyard Micro Black with the Display Italic

The nested menu is rendered in various weights from Halyard Text.

Halyard Micro with its eye-catching ink traps is used for display purposes.

Page detail featuring styles from all three sub-families: while the key figures are in Halyard Micro, the heading is rendered in Halyard Display’s SemiBold style. Halyard Text serves for the reading copy.

Wordmark for the Unconventional Innovation initative, in Halyard Text Bold, with the letter o substituted by the FIT button

Website footer

Business card templates

The “Unconventional Minds Welcome” banner in Halyard Micro Bold was one of the first applications of the new brand identity.

Founded in 1847, the Chicago Tribune is the daily newspaper for Chicago and the Great Lakes region. But it draws way beyond: it ranks sixth with regards to its nationwide circulation across the United States.

The newspaper’s website was redesigned in 2022 and since then displays a mix of three typefaces. Matthew Carter’s Georgia is the roman in use for reading texts. It is paired with Steve Matteson’s Open Sans for categories, dates, author names, and other navigational items and meta data.

What adds a spark of flavor and finesse to the site is Spectral by Production Type. This serif family is being used for headlines, lead-ins and snippets, mainly in three of its seven weights (Regular, Medium Bold). It was designed by Jean-Baptiste Levée, specifically with the use for Google Docs and Sheets in mind. As such, it’s a formidable choice for on-screen reading. Since Spectral was originally designed for medium to small text sizes, it is relatively loosely spaced. The designers of the Chicago Tribune reduced the letter spacing via CSS, finetuning the balance of black and white so that it is appropriate again for their use in slightly larger sizes.

Spectral was selected by Awwwards as one of the top recommended Google Web Fonts.

Your Future London is an online platform, created by the think tank Centre for London as part of the London Futures Review project. It invites Londoners to have their say in the direction London should take in the future.

The website, designed by Studio Cronica, with illustrations by Andrea Chronopoulos, targets a young audience through the use of bright colours and simple outline illustrations paired with bold typography.

MD Nichrome by Rutherford Craze is used for headlines and overall navigation, whilst Plantin is used for body text.

Anaya Home is a home decor brand that infuses Ayurveda philosophies into your modern lifestyle starting at home. Exhibea developed a brand identity using the Fine Extended cuts from GT Alpina, described as a “workhorse serif with a twist” and featuring a distinctive top-heavy lowercase. It’s combined in application with a monospaced typeface, Pitch Sans, the sans-serif Charlevoix, Tiempos and a polished selection of neutral colors, making for an identity that feels more like that of a luxury fashion house than a run of the mill home decor brand.

Detail from the online shop, featuring GT Alpina Fine Extended Thin for the title, Charlevoix for text, and Pitch Sans Medium for navigation and prices.

Detail from the brand story, featuring GT Alpina Fine Extended Thin for the title, all-caps Pitch Sans Medium for the heading, and Charlevoix for body copy.

In some places, the website additionally uses Tiempos Headline Light.

Corundum Text and Argent are the typefaces used for branding Domaine de Canton.

Mucca was trusted with repositioning this ginger liqueur brand. To evoke the exotic story of a liquor inspired by the romance of French Indochina, the design studio from New York brought a rich, turn-of-the-century sensibility to every aspect of the brand experience. On a typographic level, this was achieved by an ecclectic mix of styles from two families by Darden Studio.

Corundum Text is a literary serif that references the work of French mid-18th century punch-cutter Pierre-Simon Fournier. It’s used as the text typeface on the Domaine de Canton website and also for longer copy on the deluxe packaging.

Argent is a multifaceted series of historically inspired all-caps styles. The typeface family is work in progress and unreleased. While the new logo is based on Argent’s Latin style, with a golden split shadow for “Canton”, the label information is set in the bold weights of Argent Octic and Argent Grotesque. The latter also features with a shadow effect for website headings.

Web page with Argent Grotesque for headings and navigation and Corundum Text for copy and testimonials.

Mobile view of the website, with a page from the brand story set in Corundum Text.

Packaging design. “Handmade in France” shows Argent Egyptian. The monolinear Argent Antique was chosen for “L’Exotique de Luxe”. The text in the center of the back side is set in Corundum Text. The script is custom drawn.

The italics of Corundum Text lend their distinguished voice to the instructions in the recipes. Titles are set in Argent Antique, ingredients in Argent Egyptian, and amounts in Argent Antique.

Point-of-sale display featuring various styles of Argent, including the Roman for “in France”.

Corundum Italic (“Cocktail Categories”) is contrasted with the loosely spaced caps from Argent Grotesque.

Cocktail recipe featuring Argent Grotesque for title and ingredients, Argent Antique for amounts, and Corundum Text for instructions.

Anticorps (“Antibodies”) is an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, platforming “the voices of 20 artists from the French and international artistic scene. With recent and new works, they take the pulse of our ability to bond together and help us rethink how we inhabit the world.” Conceived with the experience of lockdown and the adoption of physical distancing, the exhibition is extended and enhanced by an extensive bilingual website, making some of the content available online.

The website was designed by Léna Araguas and Alaric Garnier, featuring an original yet perspicuous user interface built by Sylvain Jule. It makes early use of Enduro, Emmanuel Besse’s vision of an industrial grotesk. The straightforward sans appears in Semibold and Semibold Italic styles, from the exhibition logo and the intro to menus, bios, and more. For the texts, Enduro is paired with Garnier’s own Big Daily Long.

Enduro and Big Daily are both available from Production Type.

Homepage, French version. The intro text fades out, leaving the six keywords/topics as entry points to the exhibition.

All items are organized as layered cards that can be scrolled individually.

Enduro is used for the page intro and the rotated title on the left. The article headline is rendered in Big Daily Italic, with the roman specified for the author’s name.

Paragraph beginnings are marked by large indents, a measure that’s echoed here for the introductory quote.

Related pages are shown as stripes to the left and right and can be accessed by swiping.

The extendable top menu provides quick access to all pages.

When hovering over one of the topics in the top row, all associated artists and texts are highlighted.

“Simple retro-but-responsive site for the Chan brothers. With Xavier Dupré’s quirky Vista Sans. (Via Steve Schaffran.)” — Roger Black

It’s not clear what typeface is being used for the novel navigation. The letter weight appears to be artifically reduced so it’s difficult to identify. My best guess is Neue Helvetica Condensed. The type is rendered using the “canvas” element and is not quite stable on the circular baseline. The Vista Sans text is fresh and clean, but there are odd line-height decisions — a tad too tight for heads, and too loose for body.

That said, the overal concept for this purely typographic site is a lovely breath of fresh air and speaks well of this investment group.

What Screens Want — Some thoughts on digital canvases by Frank Chimero.

This site is an interpretation of my talk from Build, 2013. This website is typeset in Klim Foundry’s Tiempos Text. Thanks to its designer Kris Sowersby for the aire of intelligence. Large interstitial type is set in Lato. — frankchimero.com