Industry: Design

Typeface Design for Rizo

Codified from the accidental reverse contrast of manually compressed lettering

Rizo is a reverse-contrast display sans-serif from Fontfabric, designed by Vika Usmanova and Ivelina Martinova with font production and art direction by Stefan Yatanski. Its concept stems from an observed phenomenon: when designers manually compress type, horizontal strokes incidentally grow heavier than vertical ones, producing reverse contrast. The team formalised that effect into a structured neo-grotesque family of 10 styles across five widths in Regular and Bold, plus a variable font with Weight and Width axes.

Set in Rizo

Insights

The concept originated from observing that manually compressing type in graphic design incidentally inverts stroke contrast, making horizontals heavier than verticals.
The family spans five widths—Compressed, ExtraCondensed, Condensed, Narrow, and Regular—each in Regular and Bold, totalling 10 static styles.
A variable font covers both Weight and Width axes, providing the full range in a single file.
OpenType features include discretionary ligatures for capital letters, stylistic alternates, case-sensitive forms, and localized forms, with Extended Latin and Cyrillic support including Bulgarian localization.