Graphik
Commercial Type · Christian Schwartz · 2009
Christian Schwartz's deliberately vanilla editorial sans, now a sprawling system across nine weights and eight widths with a slab sibling in Produkt.
About
A neo-grotesque sans by Christian Schwartz, deliberately vanilla and built as an editorial workhorse. Graphik offsets the round bowls typical of a geometric sans with the architecture and proportions of a European grotesk, skipping the baggage of more familiar postwar faces. Low contrast, open counters and compact descenders make it work in tight settings like subheads, captions and labels, while round dots and other human touches keep it warm at title and poster sizes. The family has matured into nine weights and eight widths, from Compact through five degrees of Condensed and out to Wide, and has even spawned a slab companion in Produkt. Remains one of the most-used sans serifs in editorial and brand work.
Classification
Commercial Type describe Graphik as a deliberately vanilla editorial workhorse, a hybrid that offsets the round bowls of a geometric sans with the architecture and proportions of a European grotesk, without the baggage of more dogmatic postwar sans serifs.