Typeface Design for Signa Set

1978 Lettre d'Or winner brought into the OpenType era

Signa Set is a digitized revival of a phototypesetting typeface originally designed by Team'77 (André Gürtler, Christian Mengelt, and Erich Gschwind), which won first place in Bobst Graphic's Lettre d'Or 1978 competition. The design pairs modernist structure with calligraphic stroke-end flares. The family comprises four weights with accompanying italics, suited according to the foundry for both display headlines and extended text.

Set in Signa Set

Insights

Signa was designed specifically in accordance with phototypesetting technology; the revival adapts it for contemporary digital typesetting.
Subtle stroke-end flares give the face a calligraphic quality the foundry describes as a defining characteristic.
Two stylistic sets offer alternate forms for b, d, g, p, q — including both single- and double-storey g variants.
Optically adjusted smaller glyphs for numerators, denominators, superscripts, and subscripts are drawn heavier to maintain apparent weight consistency with the parent font.