Typeface Design for Oscar Mondadori

Designed to unify 4,500-title catalogue under one typeface

LFT Arnoldo began as an all-caps book cover typeface for the rebranding of Oscar Mondadori, an Italian publisher with over 4,500 titles spanning highly varied genres and readerships. The design required a single coherent typeface to serve as a unifying branding element across the entire catalogue. LeftLoft (Milan) built the initial capitals around a rational, contemporary structure with incised, stone-cut detailing, then extended the design into a full flared humanist sans family covering text and display use.

Set in LFT Arnoldo

Insights

The design originated as all-caps only; lowercase and the full character set were developed afterward to extend range from display to text settings.
Hourglass stems and incised stroke endings give the letterforms a glyphic, engraved quality intended to distinguish them from conventional flared sans designs.
The finished family comprises seven roman weights each with an italic counterpart, plus variable upright and italic axes, with small caps, oldstyle and lining figures, ligatures, and science/math OpenType features.
Engineering was handled by Joancarles Casasín, with quality assurance by Azza Alameddine and assistant design by Beatrice D'Agostino.