“At Commercial Type, we often push each other to take things too far, just to see what it will look like.” Schwartz was working on what he thought was the narrowest width of Graphik when fellow designer Abi Huynh challenged him to go further. The original plan for Graphik included only regular, condensed, and extra condensed widths but that quickly changed. This purposeful, elegant plainness has allowed Graphik to move effortlessly between being central to the design or playing a supporting role in many successful editorial projects, as well as corporate branding, video and broadcast design, websites, apps, and user interfaces. Graphik was designed to be a blank slate a “vanilla-flavored” typeface that is perfectly suited for whatever style of expression is needed. “I wanted a typeface without the baggage of Univers and Helvetica something that could be used in similar ways without only evoking Modernism.” While much of twentieth century design was dominated by three iconic sans serifs from Europe: Helvetica, Univers, and Futura, Schwartz was drawn to the “B-list” of sans serifs, such as Plak, Folio, and Neuzeit Grotesk, which provided an initial inspiration for Graphik. In addition to the powerful imagery, he naturally loves the typography, which is often bold, direct, and surprisingly plain. This stems from his early exposure to Modernist graphic design, particularly posters, from the mid-twentieth century.

Type designer Christian Schwartz has an enduring interest in the expressive possibilities found in plain typefaces.

Graphik x condensed similar