Typeface Design for the Lineto Library

Cold War typefaces, one fusion

Brown Condensed is a condensed companion to LL Brown, designed by Aurèle Sack and published in spring 2022. The family traces its conceptual roots to a 2007 proposal by Zurich designers Lex Trüb and Urs Lehni to fuse Johnston Sans (1916) and Super Grotesk (1930). After an earlier abandoned attempt at a condensed variant, Sack restarted the project in 2019, ultimately releasing two families in Narrow and Condensed proportions. Font engineering and mastering were handled by Lineto.

Set in LL Brown Condensed

Insights

The design synthesises Johnston Sans and Super Grotesk — one commissioned for London's public transport, the other most widely adopted in communist East Germany.
The condensed direction was first attempted and abandoned before Sack restarted it in 2019, leading to publication in spring 2022.
Non-Latin extensions for the broader LL Brown family were developed with specialist collaborators covering Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic scripts.
At the time of the source, variable font files with weight, width, and slant axes were in production for LL Brown.