Helping to Leave

Stratos in use for Helping to Leave (Допомагаємо Виїхати), an NGO that provides an evacuation helpline for Ukrainians. From a conversation with their art director, Nikita Klimov:

I hardly remember a time when we were choosing the typeface. Helping to Leave volunteers were still getting used to the reality of war, there was plenty of work, and all the decisions which could be made quickly and without any disastrous effect — we were making them quickly.

And that’s exactly how it was with the font. I saw that type.today were willing to give away typefaces for anti-war projects. I still struggle to define what a visual concept of a project that helps people escape occupation or missile attacks should be like. I was looking for a typeface to serve as a certain Helvetica – that is, which would be simple, confident and versatile, yet more distinctive. Stratos is exactly like this, because of its peculiar punctuation and diacritical signs, and narrow uppercase. This width is really helpful, since our editors are fans of long headlines.

We had also asked type.today to share the typeface Oceanic Text with us, but soon realized that the more pencils we have in our pencil case the harder it is to build a system (and we still have some problems in that department). Designer turnover is pretty high. First people are really eager to volunteer, but when it turns out that it actually is like a real job – and more than that, it’s working in a truly complicated context – they take an indefinite leave of absence.

However, we are gradually developing the project guidelines, and Stratos certainly plays an important role here.