Newspeak
Barnbrook · Jonathan Barnbrook
A display typeface built from the architectural vocabulary of Stalinist Russia, carrying a deliberate political charge rooted in Orwellian ideas about language and power.
About
Drawing on the monumental forms of Soviet architecture and the visual logic of Cyrillic letterforms, this typeface weaponises a strange, decadent beauty to evoke totalitarian control. Named after the fictional language of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it frames typography as a vehicle for political ideology, where the shape of letters can constrain or manipulate thought. Its release was accompanied by a poster featuring Tony Blair, connecting the typeface's themes to New Labour's media management and the rhetorical sleight of hand that presents neoliberalism as social democracy.
Classification
A display typeface drawing on Stalinist architectural forms and Cyrillic letterform references, making it firmly a display face with strong vernacular and political character rather than a text or body type category.