Limo Sans
Summary
Project Type
Type Design
Course
Typography 3
Tools
Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Glyphs
Timeframe
Jan – Apr 2023
Overview
Limo Sans is a typeface I designed for my Typography 3 course instructed by John Kane. In just 3 months, I developed an entire set of upper and lowercase letters, lining and old-style numerals, a complete set of symbols, multiple ligatures, and adjusted several kerning pairs. Altogether, Limo Sans has 132 characters—all of which I drew.
Pictured above is a broadside displaying each character, as well as a travel poster for Sitges, a beach town South of Barcelona, putting the typeface to use. This paragraph is set in Limo Sans.
Through creating my own typeface, I not only learned about proper metrics and proportions of letterforms; I have undoubtedly strengthened my eye for typography. I look at type differently now—I know what it does, how people read it, and what proper and improper use looks like. This skillset is invaluable as a graphic designer because I make certain that all of my work employs type in the strongest, clearest way possible.
Process
The first characters I created were capital letters "H" and "O", as all other charaters could be derived from their curves angles, and stroke widths.
I used tracing paper to draw the other characters by hand, and then traced and refined them in Adobe Illustrator. I formed words and phrases to test how legible and easy-to-read the letterforms were. When characters looked off, I refined them.
