Designed to be a blank slate, Graphik is a “vanilla-flavored” typeface that is perfectly suited for whatever style of expression is needed. Its purposeful, elegant plainness allows it to move effortlessly between being a central design element or playing a supporting role in a wide range of projects and applications

The inspiration for Graphik came from designer Christian Schwartz’s longstanding interest in the expressive possibilities found in plain typefaces. This stems from his early exposure to Modernist graphic design, particularly posters, from the mid-twentieth century. While many of these designs were dominated by the three iconic sans serifs from Europe: Helvetica, Univers, and Futura, Schwartz was drawn to the “B-list” of sans serifs. The lighter weights of Graphik were influenced by Neuzeit Grotesk, Folio, Recta, and Maxima, while the heavier ones descend from Plak, a wood display typeface, designed by Paul Renner in 1920s.

The low contrast and large x-height give the typeface great versatility. It is suitable for display purposes as well as for text sizes, captions and for such specific tasks as navigation systems and map-making. The typeface is available in weights with corresponding italics, each with five sets of figures.

First drawn as the house style for Schwartzco Inc., it was further developed for Condé Nast Portfolio and later for Wallpaper* and T, the New York Times Style Magazine. Graphik was released as a retail font in 2009. The Cyrillic extension was designed by Ilya Ruderman (CSTM Fonts) in 2015. By the way, this very text is set in Graphik.

Graphik Georgian features lower x-height and lower-hanging descenders, compared to Latin letterforms. This helps to compensate the tall ascenders and descenders, which are natural to Georgian type. There are some alternate glyphs (e.g. the modern forms of დ, ლ, რ). Also present: archaic glyphs, no longer in use in modern-day Georgian language, letters of Svan, Mingrel, and Laz languages. Importantly, the Mtavruli glyphs are to be found in their legitimate Unicode positions (Mtavruli has been added in Unicode 11.0).

Graphik Georgian was designed by Yury Ostromentsky, with native consultation from Alexander Sukiasov, a Tbilisi-based graphic and type designer, one half of Ten Waffle Studio. Special thanks to Lasha Giorgadze, the Georgian brand typography professional, and to Akaki Razmadze, who designed Georgian for Helvetica, FF Meta, and FF Sabon.

Ross Milne