Client: Renault

Custom Typeface for Renault Vehicle Badges

A typeface engineered for chrome, motion, and moulds

Production Type designed Renault Carname, a custom typeface family for interior and exterior vehicle badges across the Renault lineup. The family spans multiple widths, weights, and slopes to serve models ranging from trucks to cabriolets. Designed for legibility while the car is in motion, the project drew on technical assistance from Renault's car design team to navigate industrial manufacturing constraints.

Set in Renault Carname

Insights

Clothoid curves—used in highway and railroad design—were chosen over standard Bézier curves because they are optically smooth, mechanically reproducible, and numerically stable for machine-cutting; the glossiest letter surfaces required 8th-degree curves.
The upper surface of each letter follows a parabolic, asymmetric curve (similar to an airplane wing profile) so that at any mounting angle the chrome reflects the sky rather than the ground.
Plasturgy constraints dictated a minimum 1.30° clearance bevel angle for mould extraction; tight counters (A, 8, S) required locally increased angles, and all edges were rounded in three dimensions for safety.
Minimum typeface weight was matched to glue viscosity, and small stems and spikes were thickened and rounded to reduce hazard on impact—among the most human-factors-driven constraints in the brief.