Söhne — 20 cases

What Söhne is like to brand with

Söhne is Kris Sowersby’s reconstruction of a memory rather than a revival of a drawing: Akzidenz-Grotesk as it is remembered through Helvetica, filtered through the analogue warmth of Standard on the New York subway. That indirect lineage is why it reads as familiar and specific at once — it looks like the grotesque everyone already knows, but none of the details match.

It has consequently become a default for institutions that need to sound authoritative without sounding corporate. In the projects below it is the primary voice for a furniture company with a century of history, a research lab, a cybersecurity platform and a design biennale — four clients with nothing in common except the need to be taken seriously.

It is also, unusually, a family designers commission modifications of rather than replace. Pentagram’s Rivian face is adapted from Söhne with Klim’s involvement, which is a meaningful signal about the drawing: there is enough structure to build on and enough neutrality to leave room.

Söhne in 5 projects, read closely

Each of these was checked against the studio’s own case page, which still credits Söhne today. Where a studio explains its reasoning, the wording is theirs.

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  Rivian

  Pentagram · Source for a bespoke brand typeface

  Pentagram began with custom display numerals for the vehicle dashboard — a zero referencing the elongated oval of Rivian’s headlights — then extended them into a full alphabet adapted from Söhne, working alongside Rivian and Klim. Curves, counters and apertures were opened up and the flare on terminals reduced for a more streamlined look. Note what this is not: the brand does not simply licence Söhne, it ships a derivative of it.

  Full case on D1S1 → · Studio’s own writeup ↗

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  Isomorphic Labs

  Pentagram · Primary brand typeface

  Pentagram states the reasoning directly: Söhne’s elegant strokes, rounded curvatures and slight narrowness mirror the blocks of the visual identity. The identity is built on dynamic 3D cubes and a modular grid, so a face whose proportions echo the geometry keeps the two layers from arguing. Custom numerals and pictograms extend it without breaking the system.

  Full case on D1S1 → · Studio’s own writeup ↗

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  MIND

  Pentagram · Wordmark and brand typography

  Pentagram sets MIND’s wordmark and brand typography in Söhne, describing it simply as straightforward — which is the correct register for a data-security company whose identity already carries motion, brainwave-derived linework and a set of custom icons. The typography’s job here is to be the calm element. A useful counter-example to the idea that every identity needs an expressive face.

  Full case on D1S1 → · Studio’s own writeup ↗

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  Herman Miller

  Order Design · Primary voice, across a reserved-to-expressive range

  Order uses Söhne as the primary voice of the brand, arguing that it captures the defining characteristics of Herman Miller’s past while opening new areas of expression. The system is explicitly scaled: reserved applications dial the brand down, expressive ones dial it up, and the same family covers both. For a company with a century of modernist equity, that range is the requirement — a face that could only shout would be unusable across half the catalogue.

  Full case on D1S1 → · Studio’s own writeup ↗

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  Porto Design Biennale

  Andrew Howard · Text face in a three-family setting

  Studio Andrew Howard credits Baste A, Söhne and Coranto for the 2023 biennale’s bilingual programme, where a compact typographic layout has to carry two languages through a visual archive built around the droplet. Söhne is the neutral member of the trio, which is what makes a compact bilingual setting legible at all. Evidence that its usefulness scales down to dense print, not only up to brand display.

  Full case on D1S1 → · Studio’s own writeup ↗

Paired with, in real projects

Recorded co-use only: each pair is named together on one studio’s page for one project. Treat it as evidence that the combination has been shipped, not as a recommendation.

Coranto — Porto Design Biennale

Söhne as the neutral text voice against a serif and a display face in one bilingual programme.

Sirca — Primer

newkid’s split: the Sirca wordmark carries historical weight, Söhne keeps everything legible at any scale.

If Söhne is not the right fit

Editorial recommendations, not credits: these are our own suggestions, chosen to explain a difference rather than to list similar names. Each links to the cases set in it, so the claim is checkable.

Neue Haas Grotesk

Christian Schwartz’s faithful restoration of Miedinger’s 1957 drawing — the thing Söhne is a memory of. Choose it when you want the actual historical article rather than an interpretation of it, and can live with tighter, less screen-friendly text sizes.

ABC Diatype

Cooler and sharper, drawn first for screen reading, and with an established route to a commissioned custom cut. The better base when the brand is primarily a product interface.

Founders Grotesk

Also Klim, but built from early-20th-century metal specimens and noticeably more idiosyncratic. Pick it when Söhne’s neutrality is leaving the brand without a personality of its own.