Typeface Design for Riforma Mono
NORM's geometric Riforma was predestined for a mono fit
Designed by NORM and released by Lineto in 2024, LL Riforma Mono extends the LL Riforma family—developed between 2012 and 2018—into the monospace genre. The release marks NORM's 25th anniversary and returns to territory the studio explored early in its practice through self-made monospaced fonts. Font engineering and mastering were handled by Alphabet, Berlin.
Set in LL Riforma Mono, LL Riforma
Insights
- LL Riforma's geometric construction and large x-height made many characters straightforward to condense into fixed-width boxes, while others offered room to amplify the typeface's playful undertones.
- Serifs and crossbars were prolonged relative to the original, and the pronounced sharpness of LL Riforma softens slightly in the Mono adaptation.
- The family includes full sets of Unicode-approved box-drawing characters and block elements—semigraphics from the early digital era that became obsolete with PostScript, and which the source suggests might now remind us that typography was once a craft of the human hand.
- NORM regards unified character width as the most versatile typesetting solution, a position rooted in their earliest design practice.
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