An earnest, practical sans with Miles Newlyn

New Reason

New Reason draws from memories of pulling out flat, squeaky and half-stuck cases of late 19th century printers type, blowing the dust off, and being fascinated by their jumble. Organised by an eye that could reconcile four-sizes and three genres of sans serif R, some of these cases had been ill-served. Others had been lucky and orderly printers or attentive students had reunited companion with companion.

In either case, a surprise: early sans typefaces were not organised as they are now. Weights and sizes were designed and manufactured separately, and a single font would startle with unexpected combinations of structure, terminals or apertures.

A lot of the work of New Reason was finding a way to harmonise contrasts. I had fun grabbing offshoots and offcuts of late 19th century British grotesques, adding and removing eccentricities until a new balance could be found. Originally, the contrast between the wide, stable capitals and the narrower, more dynamic lowercase was more extreme. The result was a little more tense than we wanted — making it gentler was part of how we found our way to the warmth and dignity of the final design.