Arlen
Groteskly Yours · 2022
A 36-style variable display sans with high contrast and flaring stems, drawing on 1980s visual culture and hand-painted signage traditions.
About
Spanning six width grades from Tight to Wide and six weights from Light to Heavy, the family ships with a Weight and Width variable font axis alongside the static styles. Flaring stems and dynamic letterforms give it a distinctive character rooted in 20th-century sign-painting, while 950+ characters per font cover most Latin and Cyrillic languages with alternates and ligatures included. Best suited to headlines, packaging and advertising work where expressive weight is required.
Classification
High-contrast flaring stems and dynamic letterforms drawn from 1980s visual culture and hand-painted sign traditions place this firmly in the display category despite claims of text usability. The exaggerated stroke contrast and expressive construction make it a display sans rather than a functional text face.