This September has delivered an exceptional collection of typographic innovations that blend historical reverence with contemporary functionality. Eight standout typeface releases are offering designers fresh options that range from workhorse grotesques for extensive branding systems to expressive display faces for impactful headlines, each bringing unique personality and warmth to creative projects.
Leading the month's releases is Futura 100 by TypeTogether, marking a century since Paul Renner's iconic geometric sans-serif was first released in 1927. This ambitious reimagining represents an extensive two-year collaboration with Bauer Types, resulting in a multiscript typeface that supports 23 writing systems covering over 90% of the world's population. The first phase includes Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Khmer, Lao, Latin, Myanmar, PanAfrican Latin, and Thai scripts, with major Indic scripts, Simplified Chinese, and Hangul to follow.
GT Era by Grilli Type takes a deliberately different approach, shunning the algorithmic neutrality of contemporary grotesques in favor of warm, idiosyncratic character inspired by pre-modernist designs like Breite Fette Grotesk, Venus, and early Akzidenz Grotesk. Designer Thierry Blancpain's creation embraces friction, championing recognition over uniformity and flavor over conformity. The family comprises Display and Text styles with matching obliques, connected through an optical size axis that offers genuinely different levels of expressiveness rather than subtle technical adjustments.
Foundry Æterna by The Foundry Types responds to what David Quay, one of the foundry's principals, describes as the "persistent reliance on ubiquitous, overused Neo-Grotesk typefaces." This neo-grotesk typeface with a workhorse aesthetic isn't just another revival but a thoughtful synthesis of modernist principles for the digital age. The design prioritizes clarity through harmonious letterforms, a large x-height, and compact spacing, featuring distinctive details like subtly extended terminals and horizontal shaping that express contemporary character while avoiding sterile uniformity.
Urbolyt by Mostardesign Type Foundry represents a fascinating clash between geometric rigor and organic forms. Each letter is described as raw architecture where razor-sharp angles meet unpredictable curves, creating constant tension between solidity and delicacy. The variable version ranges from 75 to 150 width, enabling designers to sculpt word density and transform headlines into visual manifestos, making it ideal for impactful headlines, brand logos, and event posters.
From Valencia-based errorerror.studio comes EE Piscina, a modular typeface that designers Paloma Luismi describe as bringing "hints of pool water and aftersun, tastes like ice-cold lemonade and smells like freshly cut grass." Available in three styles (S, M, and L), this release embodies the duo's philosophy of creating typefaces that carry emotional resonance beyond mere functionality, serving as "a fan-blown breeze for overheated designers" and an antidote to algorithmic design thinking.
LL Unica77 by Lineto represents the authorized digital revival of Haas Unica, created in 1980 as a response to licensing restrictions around Helvetica and regarded by many as the pinnacle of modernist type design. Remastered by original Team '77 member Christian Mengelt from their own drawings, LL Unica77 includes a fully condensed family, rich OpenType features, stylistic sets, full Cyrillic and Greek support, and a fully variable counterpart with three axes for weight, width, and slant manipulation.
Djaggety by Typeland celebrates the beauty of productive constraints, born from a classroom exercise using an 88-pixel grid. What began as a teaching tool evolved into a three-style display family that embraces rather than refines its inherent coarseness. The typeface's charm lies in its acceptance of systematic limitations, with every letterform emerging from the same pixel module, creating unexpected quirks and formal solutions that demonstrate how digital constraints can generate distinctive personality.
Rounding out the collection is Gregory Grotesk by Typemates, designed by Jakob Runge and Antonia Cornelius. This typeface strikes a balance between distinctive personality and functional reliability, creating a charismatic font that works well in both branding and UI design. Gregory's personality emerges through charming quirks embedded within solid structural foundations, featuring top-heavy letterforms combined with rounded inner corners that create a handmade patina humanizing digital environments. The typeface includes 24 individual styles spanning compressed to normal widths, unified within a single variable font with Greek and Cyrillic scripts and support for over 270 languages.
