Custom Typeface for American Academy of Arts and Letters
Making a typeface less identifiable on purpose
New York-based artists' honour society Arts and Letters commissioned Studio Mathias Clottu to redesign its graphic identity under new directorship. Lineto supported the project by modifying LL Unica77 into a bespoke weight serving everything from banners and signage to stationery and a portfolio website. The adaptation deliberately made the typeface's signature characters less recognisable, supporting the designers' preference for discretion over institutional distinctiveness.
Set in LL Unica77
Insights
- A new weight was developed specifically to maintain coherence across a wide range of sizes and applications rather than adapting existing weights.
- Signature characters were redesigned to reduce the typeface's recognisability, inverting the usual goal of distinctive institutional letterforms.
- The same custom weight serves both large-format signage and text in tiny sizes on the image-centred portfolio website.
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