Please join us for a talk by Commercial Type founder and partner Paul Barnes about their new venture resurrecting classic typefaces. He'll share where these designs came from, how they got made, and how they are still relevant to today's designers.
For the last ten years, Commercial Type has been designing contemporary typefaces — from modern classics like Graphik, Druk, Publico, and Guardian, to more experimental faces like Orientation and Styrene. Some of these, like Lyon and Portrait, have been informed and inspired by the past, but not dominated by it.
All the while, Commercial Type has been searching through long-forgotten specimens looking for hidden treasures — designs long forgotten and no longer available — which still resonate. These are designs that even today are useful — from the workhorse like sans, through to the more exotic like Italian.
Launched in 2019, Commercial Classics is a collection of these faces. Rather than being modern interpretations where the designer leaves an obvious mark, they are careful reconstructions, made not for yesterday, but for designers today. They take the old forms and expand them in new directions, yet retaining the charm and beauty of the originals.
