YZD is among the most ambitious urban development projects in North America: on the site of the former Downsview Airport (call sign: YZD) near Toronto, seven new neighborhoods for 60,000 residents are planned to be developed over a period of three decades. Pentagram was commissioned with the branding of this monumental project.
The branding needed to reference the aviation heritage of the site while also addressing the transformation toward an open urban district. For this reason, the stencil typeface Cera Stencil was chosen for the wordmark. Pentagram writes:
The display typeface is Cera Stencil, referencing airport signage while reading cleanly across radically different contexts—from monumental site signage to wayfinding systems to digital platforms to tenant applications.
Another detail is the 54-degree angle of the Z in the YZD wordmark, which reflects the actual geometry of the central runway.
Cera Pro, from which Cera Stencil originates, was chosen for the body text. The typeface is a geometrically simple yet warm sans serif that can be used universally, ensuring consistent yet varied branding across diverse sizes and formats.
