Verbatim

During my formative years, the very first typeface I began to recognise was the one that always seemed to be associated with the most fantastical and futuristic science fiction TV shows and movies of the 1970s.

By association with the coolest shows, naturally made it the coolest typeface. That’s how a typeface can “get under your skin” and influence you. Again, by association, you may think that if this show/film/product is great, then perhaps so will another show/film/etc. be great that uses the same font.

I never knew its name until I was making my way through art college training to be a technical illustrator. I would buy numerous Letraset sheets of it for use in pretty much all of my projects. Strangely, I did seem to be buying more sheets than those who had chosen a more economical face. The typeface in question was, of course, Microgramma.

As an adult and learning to recognise type in the world, Microgramma seemed to be everywhere. I’m sure my love of this typeface influenced my later purchase of a Toshiba television and to drive a Subaru car!

I just love the cinematic quality of Aldo Novarese and Alessandro Butti’s design – particularly the extended capitals. I’m not so keen on the lowercase options to be honest, but then again, from what I have read, the lowercase character set was not part of Microgramma’s original design.

As a graphic designer in the 1990s, moving from Letraset to digital type on a Mac and having access to use the Eurostile family, I found the range of weights and styles available somewhat limiting.

So the challenge to myself was to create a more diverse and versatile Microgramma for the 21st Century – pure science fiction!

My design process began by sketching Microgramma from memory, attempting to capture the cinematic quality of its glorious extended type. It soon dawned on me that there was potential to capture the full cinematic experience by creating an ultra-condensed style that could be used for movie credits too. And how would I address the lowercase? Was it possible to enhance legibility so that (what would become) Verbatim had far wider uses and appeal than just being implemented in titling and credits?

The results, as you can hopefully see, are quite pleasing. I went with a large x-height for the lowercase combined with short ascenders and descenders, large open counters, and bowls that have a more rounded appearance than Microgramma’s flattened style. These features give Verbatim a pleasant reading experience as well as strong, distinctive type when in stand-alone situations.

And, if you’re not so keen on my open counters, you can activate Stylistic Set 1 and make avail of the more Novarese-esque alternates for the C/G/S/a/c/s/& glyphs – instantly giving your type a more retro feel.

Also included as standard with Verbatim are small caps, simply activate them in your app with the click of a button. These small caps harmonise with the lowercase characters so that you can create unicase-style typography – something that I was always keen to play with when creating logotype as a graphic designer.

What will you create with Verbatim? Please let me know, I’d love to add your designs to my “fonts in use” gallery.

Thank you,