Industry: Design

Typeface Design for Corporate Typography

64 styles, four widths, one coherent system

Conto is a minimalist sans-serif superfamily designed by Nils Thomsen in 2014, comprising 64 styles across four widths: Conto, Conto Narrow, Conto Condensed, and Conto Compressed. Its spurless lowercase forms merge constructed geometric neutrality with a humanistic touch, supported by open counters and a generous x-height. The family spans Thin to Black with italics across all widths, includes a variable font version, and carries more than 878 glyphs per font with broad OpenType feature support. Conto is published in memory of Peter Bruhn, who provided feedback during development and planned its release through his Fountain Foundry.

Set in Conto

Insights

Spurless lowercase letterforms were chosen to avoid the coarse geometry associated with strict Bauhaus construction while maintaining a neutral, simplified appearance.
Each weight includes case-sensitive and small-cap-sensitive punctuation, ensuring typographic consistency across figure and cap styles.
The family includes approximately 100 discretionary ligatures, extending its usefulness to logotype and lettering work beyond conventional text setting.
A variable font version provides additional interpolation flexibility beyond the 64 discrete static styles.