Gia is 7 weights, true small caps and unicase options, designed after iconic letterforms of the 1960’s to 1980’s. In the early years of the American tech revolution, when Silicon Valley was more closely identified with Dallas, Texas, a curious type of letterform began to appear—strict in geometry, and curiously minimal in geometry and stroke, making it easier to be read by machine-readers, and people more used to reading machine-generated typography. Coders! As the years went on, this kind of sinewy, curved letterform began popping up in logotypes and music videos and upright video games: NASA, The Buggles, Atari, Pong, Sega, Namco, Stern, Devo, Apple. Gia pays homage to that letterform, and is named after Gia Carangi, the iconic face of early 1980’s pop fashion.

FF Bauer Grotesk is a revival of the metal type Friedrich Bauer Grotesk, released between 1933 and 1934 by the foundry Trennert & Sohn in Hamburg Altona, Germany. The geometric construction of the typeface, infused with the art déco zeitgeist of that era, is closely related to such famous German designs as Futura, Erbar, Kabel and Super Grotesk that debuted a few years earlier. However, Bauer Grotesk stands out for not being so dogmatic with the geometry, lending the design a warmer, more homogenous feeling. The oval “O” is a good example of that, as well as characteristic shapes like the capital M or the unconventionally differing endings of “c” and “s” which make for a less constructed look. Watch the FF Bauer Grotesk introduction video on Vimeo