Responses by Jacob Heftmann, graphic design director, Grilli Type.
Background: Grilli Type’s latest typeface release, GT Mechanik, channels the warmth of electromechanical text systems of the past. Its monospace influences aren’t stylistic opt-ins but structural inevitabilities; abrupt joints, interrupted connections and oversized punctuation emerge from the constraints of space, producing simple, slightly naïve shapes that feel sturdy in utilitarian use but still wander in prose. The family spans three tones—Mono, Semi and Poly—expressing the same underlying logic at different amplifications. Rather than optimizing for a single size or use, GT Mechanik instead invites designers to find the tone that suits their message.
Design thinking: GT Mechanik’s design concept is based on its monospace style, but its effect is much closer to the warmth of typewriter text on paper than computer code on a screen. We wanted to build a world for the typeface that expresses that feeling through the concept of predigital communication: analog signals, radio waves moving through space and physical interfaces used to produce messages. It’s an exploration of how we communicate beyond the words themselves.
Challenges: Because so much design and so much of our communication is mediated by screens, we wanted to actually take the typeface to a different medium. We had the idea to turn the minisite into a sort of fantastical machine that could send physical messages. It lets one test the typeface but also turn that into a message that will be printed as a postcard and mailed to someone you know. This required some additional technical skill to implement as we had to design an interface to create and send the postcards as well as the back end to screen messages, produce the print-ready files, and send them to the printer for production and fulfillment.
Favorite details: The entire design concept is, on some level, about details. The text of all the switches, buttons and displays each have their own little wink they give to the audience, but also, the typeface itself is the outcome of deep attention to detail.
Visual influences: We dug deep into the world of electromechanical typesetting (such as the IBM Selectric typewriter); analog interfaces containing all manners of buttons, knobs and cathode-tube displays; the world of HAM radio and QSL cards; analog synthesizers; and all kinds of other “forgotten technologies.”
Specific project demands: We always want to tell new stories about the typefaces we release. That’s why we came up with the idea of the postcard generator. That had its own complexities: for example, we wanted to make sure that the messages people created were kind. This gave us the opportunity to experiment with new tools and apply some skills, ones that aren’t necessarily in the remit of traditional graphic design but are becoming increasingly relevant and important for the designer to understand.
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