Confer Sans

Everyone needs to write. Some of us more often. Some of us less so. But we all know one thing: turning spoken words into written letters is part of our culture. It is vital to our community. Regardless of the tool we use: it is part of being human.

The printing press has refined our taste in letters. For hundreds of years, readers have become used to seeing printed perfection on each page. With the advent of the neogrotesk typeface in the mid-20th century, this not only meant ideal outlines. It also meant an ideal structure of the fonts we saw. This gridlocked perfection is the benchmark of today’s digital typography. We are surrounded by sans-serif fonts that radiate a sharp and clean appeal. They look stunning on posters and packaging. Yet, the impression they make can sometimes lack humanness.

Confer Sans is Identity Letters’ answer to the predicament of the sans-serif. It is a typeface that maintains the degree of digital perfection expected from a contemporary design while also looking at the human aspect of writing. It is geared to the natural flow of the seminal writing tool: the broad-nib pen, or rather: the broad-nib marker. This approach causes stroke endings to be angular or even rectangular in relation to the stroke. The resulting character is primal, vivid, and candid.

Medieval calligraphers and early punchcutters “corrected” open stroke endings in old-style serif typefaces: They continued the strokes so they met the baseline. Modern neogrotesk typefaces “correct” the stroke endings according to a design program. In contrast, Confer Sans celebrates the primal joy of the uncorrected, angular stroke ending. Confer Sans is a humanist sans in the best sense of the word: sophisticated enough to be suited for professional, serious, on-brand communication. Informal enough to appeal to people who might be reluctant to accept an anonymous, authoritative neogrot.

At 16 styles (8 weights plus italics), each with close to 700 glyphs, Confer Sans leaves nothing to be desired in terms of cutting-edge typesetting. With 10+ sets of figures for different uses, boxed and circles numbers and arrows, 100+ languages supported, 10 stylistic sets, and a bouquet of additional OpenType features, this font family is up for print and digital projects of all kinds.

Confer Sans lends itself to uses in the humanities, in cultural and educational contexts, for tourism, packaging, music and festivals, branding, and advertising. Ultimately, though, it is an enriching voice wherever humans are interconnected through communication.