Systems, Mistakes, and the Sea

In his almost-weekly newsletter, designer, writer and typographer Robin Rendle shares his observations about design and design systems in his characteristic style – a combination of relaxed chatter by the fireplace and hyperboles. Sometimes a thought needs more space and attention than a newsletter offers, and an example can be seen here. For his mini-essay Systems, Mistakes and the Sea, Rendle built a web page, where he pairs a painting of a ship in troubling circumstances with a shipload(!) of nautical UI comparisons. The typefaces in use are Caponi Display and Newzald. About his typeface selection, Rendle writes:

It also gave me the opportunity to do a bit of typesetting and I set myself a rule as I began designing it. I only wanted to use typefaces in my collection, as it’s all too easy to spend a month scouring the web for something just right.

In the end I chose Caponi by Commercial Type for the heading and Newzald by Klim Type for the body copy. And I had stumbled upon this painting of a shipwreck by William Bradford that I knew would hold the whole thing together:

There’s something so fun about this to me, about remixing all these elements together—typography, art and writing—in order to create something that feels new. For instance Caponi looks like the sort of thing that would be carved into the hull of a ship to spell out its name and Newzald looks as if you would set a modern printing of Moby Dick with, so it was perfect. For the break elements I also fashioned the nautical star which I hope is not too cheesy here.