
The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? âWhen designing a font I try to question every letter,â says Jason Smith, âbut all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, theyâre the lowercase âaâ and âgâ and the uppercase âIâ and âJâ. âI remember a friend saying, âWhy on earth have you designed the âaâ like that? Isnât it too friendly for this kind of font?â And, in a way, thatâs what I wanted â honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.â Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid âFS Albert was inspired by â and named after â my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,â says Jason Smith. âI designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. âI recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.â 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.