Olivia King

I spent hours pouring over early book covers, advertising materials, original drawings, and notes from designers and typographers who have shaped Penguin’s visual identity.

The goal was to create a typeface that felt both rooted in history and ready for today, able to sit confidently on the cover of a classic novel or a contemporary bestseller.

Type designers have a unique chance to make inclusivity part of the default approach rather than an exception. It’s another design consideration – one that can inspire better solutions.

This project has been incredibly humbling and rewarding. Even now, it feels surreal to have contributed to a brand with such an important typographic and literary history.

Typography should not be a barrier. It should invite people in.

Accessibility should be the default, not the exception.

If the goal of Inclusive Sans was to make reading easier for as many people as possible, it doesn’t make sense to put a paywall in front of it.

A few years ago, I was working on branding projects in the disability and government sectors, where accessibility was always a big focus.

Comic Sans is one of the most accessible fonts out there, but it’s probably not the look you’d want for, say, a disability advocacy organisation working in policy and research.

The whole idea behind Inclusive Sans was to create something highly functional but also nice enough that it could fit in anywhere, so that accessibility isn’t an afterthought, but just the default.