Typeface Design for Lineto's Grey Library

From 2004 diploma project to published typeface: AS Gold becomes LL Grey

LL Grey is a sans serif designed by Aurèle Sack, released by Lineto in 2018/2021. Rooted in the French grotesque tradition, it began as Sack's ECAL diploma project in 2004 under the name AS Gold. The family was later extended with Cyrillic developed with Viktoriya Grabowska and Greek with Panos Haratzopoulos; font engineering was handled by Alphabet, Berlin.

Set in LL Grey

Insights

The typeface retains the characteristic abrupt stroke endings of the French grotesque genre while achieving a contemporary, screen-friendly appearance.
Sack applied the same method used in LL Purple and LL Brown: drawing formal cues from a historic model while imposing his own precise rendering.
The design widens the idiosyncratic proportions of 19th-century grotesques rather than faithfully reviving them.