Typeface Design for Lineto

From a 1987 Monaco bitmap trace to a variable text face by 2024

LL Autoscape is a 2024 redraw and expansion by Minjong Kim and Lineto of a monospace design with layered origins: Andrew Welch's 1987 bitmap font traced Susan Kare's Monaco at 9-point; Cornel Windlin based a 1996 design on that existing work, released by Lineto in 1998. The typeface appeared in the 1999 Zurich exhibition Die Schweizer Autobahn and photographer Nicolas Faure's photobook Autoland. Decades later, Another Man magazine's selection of LL Autoscape for a new masthead prompted Kim to redraw all characters from scratch, introduce optical refinements, and extend the family into a variable range spanning Light and Bold masters plus a rounded variant, making it viable for body text at small sizes.

Set in LL Autoscape

Insights

Kim introduced subtle stroke contrast and squarish dots as optical improvements over letterforms that had been compromised by mechanical tracing of a 9-point bitmap.
Determining curve endpoints across Light and Bold masters required constant calculator use to maintain the systematic monospace construction.
A rounded variant shares the same design skeleton yet reads with a noticeably different character, demonstrating range achievable within a monolinear monospace structure.
Font engineering and mastering was handled by Alphabet, Berlin.