Typeface Design for Programme

Built from two glyphs outward

Programme is a typeface by Swiss studio Maximage, developed with scripting technology and grounded in the premise that the calligraphic glyphs 'o' and 'n' contain a font's full structural DNA. A computer program was used to derive the complete Latin alphabet from those two forms. The family ships in both a rougher and a more refined style, with intentional programmatic imperfections retained in the former. The first version was featured in the 2009 JRP Ringier book Typeface as Program.

Set in Programme

Insights

The entire alphabet was algorithmically derived from calligraphic 'o' and 'n', on the principle that a typeface reuses a limited set of shapes across all characters.
Programmatic imperfections were deliberately left uncorrected in the rougher style to preserve the typeface's generative character.
The family includes seventeen OpenType stylistic sets, covering classic, geometric, and per-glyph alternates for letters including G, K, Q, R, S, U, a, e, and r.
Contextual alternates automatically raise dashes between uppercase letters or numerals to an optically correct height.