Industry: Design

Means, a serif typeface for Mailchimp

Replacing Cooper Black's era baggage without losing its warmth

Greg Gazdowicz at Commercial Type drew Means, a variable serif family, for Mailchimp's 2020 identity evolution. It replaced Bitstream Cooper Light, which had insufficient weight range and poor suitability for interface design. Cooper Oldstyle served as the primary historical reference, with Goudy italics informing the accompanying italic styles developed with Christian Schwartz.

Set in Means

Insights

Cooper Oldstyle was chosen over Cooper Black because it shares the DNA without the strong era associations of the 1930s, 1970s, and 1990s.
Figures were made more traditionally proportioned than Cooper's wide originals to give the family a contemporary character.
Vertical proportions were designed to be compatible with Graphik, Mailchimp's secondary typeface.
Schwartz drew on Goudy Oldstyle's wandering slant angles to introduce what he called 'absurdist energy' into the italics.