Typeface Design for Lineto's Cyan Library
From a classroom writing drill to a 16-style type family
LL Cyan, designed by Aurèle Sack and released in 2025, originates from a 2003 ECAL class exercise introduced by François Rappo, in which students studied pages from Jan Tschichold's Redis-nib writing drills in his 1942 Schriftkunde. Sack returned to those drawings in 2019 to develop a full typeface, preserving the humanist curve tendencies of Tschichold's model while introducing stroke contrast to smooth joints and refine terminals. The family comprises five weights—light, regular, medium, bold, and black—plus three monospaced weights, each weight including three sets of framed numbers and uppercase alphabets, totalling 16 styles. Font engineering and mastering were handled by Alphabet, Berlin.
Set in LL Cyan
Insights
- The Redis nib produces equal stroke width in any direction; Sack introduced contrast to make joints smoother and more subtle, and to refine the terminals.
- Light, bold, and black weights were drawn manually; medium was interpolated between regular and black, while regular was calibrated directly to Tschichold's original sketches.
- Sack modularised some constructions and proportions as part of a rational design approach, while intentionally amplifying the humanist tendencies already present in Tschichold's source drawings.
- The three monospaced weights sit on the wider end of the monospaced genre, producing a raw, technical character distinct from the proportional styles.
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