Sharp Type

Immediately noticeable features are the affably wonky nods to the wood type era, such as the highly swashy ear of the “g” and the curvaceous leg of the “R”. The character of the typeface shines through the construction of its letterforms, which transition from a capsule-based letter shape found in the more condensed widths, which gradually transform toward the fully round shapes in the 20-25 widths. Ink traps—a strange feature for a typeface so informed by wood type—are useful in optimizing both large and mid range optical sizes in different ways. In the mid to thin widths, they help maintain texture and legibility at smaller sizes. In the tightly-packed Black weight, they facilitate the hairline negative space that defines the letters.

In the winter of 2022, Connor Davenport began engineering a Sharp Grotesk variable font after years spent developing the workflow and tools to produce font files in this relatively new format. Given Sharp Grotesk’s wide spectrum of weights and widths, it was the logical evolution for the typeface.

In 2016, when Lucas originally published Sharp Grotesk, he designed it as a “variable static” font. The original 21 widths gave the user an extraordinary range of options to determine how headlines fit into a text block. Now, in 2023, the technology is finally at a place where we felt comfortable developing Lucas’ original idea into a true variable designspace.

“A variable font is like a normal OpenType font, but they have what we call ‘OpenType Variations’ features. These features contain bits of information that are embedded in the font to instruct the way each glyph’s points should move along any given axis,” says Connor. This variable font has 3 axes: weight, width, and slant. The weight ranges from 250 – 900, corresponding to the static family’s current weight structure. The width also follows the original structure of going from 05 – 25. We have also included a slant axis, ranging from 0 – 10, with each number corresponding to a degree of slant. 

“When drawing a typeface family, typically we use interpolation in the production phase to produce static instances between our sources, e.g. a Medium weight can be generated from a Thin and Black weight,” says Connor. “With a VF, this interpolation happens on the user's end via a design application with sliders. Practically, this minimizes the font’s overall file size, saving crucial space; in the case of Sharp Grotesk Latin, we see savings of around 2000%, going from 294 files to 1.”

Every good contemporary typeface is an amalgamation: of invention and homage, the contemporary and the timeless, human feeling and machine perfection. Taste is essential, but so is good judgment and technique. The original Latin release of Sharp Grotesk has the Swiss spirit in its texture, but idiosyncratic details in the letterforms impart a warmth that sets it apart from so many other contemporary neo-grotesks, and its wide variety of width and weight make it endlessly versatile. 

Its variety now extends into new territory and is an ongoing exploration. The world of multi-script type design is still fresh. As such, there’s a responsibility for type designers to establish organic processes that respect the principles of individual native scripts while progressing the design language. Harmonizing these different scripts under a single family has been anything but mechanical or systemized, and the time spent developing these processes reflects our due diligence. Every shape and proportion has been scrutinized while the overall impression is one of absolute ease. By the same token, we had to wait until the right moment to make our first variable font. While the original blueprint of Sharp Grotesk has been practically recontextualized with these extensions, Sharp Grotesk Global exists in these combined worlds while retaining the sturdy yet playful feel that has made it so singular.

Our newest addition to Sharp Type Things: a double-sided Sharp FM vinyl slip mat that also functions as a type specimen for Sharp Grotesk. It features the unofficial Sharp FM slogan “Talk less, listen more” spiraling outward in all five scripts on Side A; Side B has our Sharp Grotesk Globe graphic.