From Akkurat to Everywhere

Okay, we all know how old Helvetica is now (like older than you but younger than… er… the Bauhaus) but lets just give it a bit of a rest for now. It’s work is pretty much done and there’s a whole host of it’s contemporaries vying for your attention. The most insidiously demanding of which has to be Akkurat [lineto.com/akkurat]. Haven’t noticed it yet? You soon will do. Designed by Laurenz Brunner [laurenzbrunner.com] as part of his graduating projects, Akkurat was licensed by Lineto, the type foundry set up by Cornel Windlin and Stephan Müller a couple of years ago and has since been included in award winning projects the world over. It seems that only now it’s influence has starting filtering into mainstream usage. It has been used as part of the refreshed identity for the Yauatcha restaurant in London’s Soho designed by MadeThought [madethought.com] and in the rebranding of the Southbank Centre (check out the signage, it’s all Akkurat) – like Meta in the 90s [spiekermann.com], FontFont’s redraw of DIN [fontfont.com] and Tobias Frere-Jones‘ [typography.com/biographies] extension of the highway signage alphabet, now called Interstate, for Font Bureau [fontbureau.com/interstate] later on – Akkurat looks set to make a clean sweep of the current Design vernacular. It’ll be interesting to see if it has the longevity of the afore-mentioned decade defining typefaces… roll on Akkurat Black.