NEWTYPOGRAPHY
It seems that the Occupy Movement has adopted Oswald Font as the movement’s default protest font. I am honoured and intrigued. Ironically i had already started on a font to donate to OccupyDesign before i realised Oswald had already been adopted and used for a while.
In fact Oswald was semi-inspired by the condensed gothics often favoured by the 1960s underground political presses. Because the posters, magazines and pamphlets were made on old presses, ‘Letrasetted’ or simply cut and pasted, the type of the political underground had an urgent, punchy and ‘unauthorised’ feel (and it was of course all 3 of those things).
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Oswald gives a great 1984 sort of feel over a quarter of a century later. I love the “Quiet” poster. But it’s sort of ironic, because I wouldn’t really call it a populist font. (Not that I know what a populist font is, but I’ll know it when I see it. The condensed sans serif is very establishment. It speaks to me of either totalitarianism, movie posters, or ironic consumerism, like the Church of the Subgenius.)
Not that this has anything to do with fonts, but I’d like to see news about stocks removed from newscasts, because it continues the fiction that the economic health of a country is measured by the ups and downs of a financial market for people with wealth to spare.
I’ve been doing a lot of OWS design in the last month, and I love Oswald, but it’s trouble for most of the literature and posters since there’s just the one weight. Any chance that a heavy weight is in the works? We’re all so tired of Gotham and Knockout
Beautiful work, btw.
Thanks Nicole
Due to popular demand, Heavy and ‘regular’ weights coming within 2-3 weeks.
Hi there, guy who did the red background posters here.
I think it’s a lovely, flexible font. Occupy Design just made a little “starter kit” to kickstart people making graphics, and rather than suffering too much design paralysis choosing fonts, I just ran with it and starting making stuff for them.
It’s solid for infographics, and I’ve enjoyed the visual continuity of using it in the posters, whether original or adapting old WWII propaganda posters for OWS. I worked on a lot of simple infographics that tried to make one simple point that was easily read from a distance. I think Oswald helps a lot with that.
I can’t wait to use the bold version, I’ve really looked forward to a big heavy version for some posters.
Anyway, nice font.
Hey Brian, Really great posters
I designed Oswald as a pretty simple display webfont, but then people started using it for print and that kicked me into more weights and improving the kerning. The new Light and Bold have much improved kerning and i should have a new Regular with improved kerning within 2 weeks. I agree, a true ‘Big Heavy’ would be a helpful weight, and it’s in the pipeline, asap. Cheers 