LL Geigy
Lineto · Robert Huber · 2023
A sans-serif drawn from pre-Helvetica Swiss lettering, built around pronounced thick-thin contrast and eccentric curves that counter the austerity of the era's standard grotesques.
About
Robert Huber spent over three years developing LL Geigy, taking as his starting point Karl Gerstner's 1953 masthead lettering for Geigy Berater and the broader tradition of whimsical, hand-drawn Swiss typography that Helvetica's dominance later obscured. The family runs to four weights with italics, plus two monospaced weights in which the contrast creates unusual spatial tension, widening and narrowing letterforms in ways that amplify rather than suppress their idiosyncratic character. Compact metrics and tightly closed apertures with horizontal terminals make it legible at small sizes despite its expressive proportions.
Classification
A sans-serif with pronounced thick-thin contrast and horizontal terminals, drawing from pre-Helvetica Swiss hand-lettering and custom typography; its eccentric curves and tightly closed forms sit closer to humanist than geometric or grotesque traditions.