Industry: Design

Styrene

Named for styrene's purposefully synthetic feeling in curves and geometry

Styrene is a sans-serif family by Berton Hasebe, developed with Ilya Ruderman and Panagiotis Haratzopoulos. Its starting point was Breede Schreeflooze, a charmingly awkward sans serif from an early 20th-century Enschedé Typefoundry specimen, though the design takes a deliberately ahistorical stance. The family comes in two widths—A and B—each offering a distinct texture for different typesetting contexts.

Set in Styrene

Insights

Narrow characters such as f, j, r, and t are hyperextended and flattened, creating unexpected openness in the texture.
Version A is dogmatically geometric with a stronger overall personality; Version B is narrower for better copyfit without being truly condensed.
The name reflects the purposefully synthetic feeling of the family's curves and geometry.