Ava & Lucas

Ava and Lucas are two magnetic dress-up dolls designed by illustrator Judith Drews, “perfect for decorating the refrigerator of any family with children.” — Gestalten

The typeface used on the packaging is Canary, designed by Mark Frömberg during his undergrad studies at HTW Berlin, initiated by an assignment in Jürgen Huber’s type design class.

[…] many fonts are not suited to be used with most editorial illustration artwork. Either they don’t fit or they even reject each other. Hence, I tried to design a typeface that can sit next to as many illustration styles as possible.

Frömberg lists many sources of inspiration for Canary, including italic manuscripts and writing samples by Arrighi, Fugger, Granjon, Manutius and Tagliente. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good deal can also be ascribed to an admiration of Underware’s body of work, though. The partly connected, slightly left-leaning cursive with a brush-lettered feel merges several of the features that this trailblazing type collective has employed, without being too close a follower of any of their typefaces in particular. Canary comes in six weights equipped with small caps, dozens of ligatures, titling and swash alternates, as well as catchwords.

One year after the release of Canary, the native Berliner moved to The Hague to enroll in the Type and Media master program at the Royal Academy of Arts — the same place where the Underware members had met in 1998. His graduate project Shequalin, “a text typeface designed for sophisticated humoristic literature and all kinds of typographic shenanigans”, is mouth-watering. It’s not available yet — Frömberg is wise enough to know that “typefaces need to ripe and mature over long time” — but I am already looking forward to the release of Shequalin, or other works by this talented chap.