LL Sonora
Lineto · Rosmarie Tissi, Céline Odermatt · 2024
A digital revival of Rosmarie Tissi's 1972 experimental alphabet, reconstructed from her original drawings and expanded from roughly fifty characters to over two hundred by type designer Céline Odermatt.
About
Originally drawn in 1972 and first commercially released through Zurich typesetting firm Englersatz after 1978, Sonora is defined by open counters and parallel-line construction that reads as a deliberate rejection of the Swiss Style conventions embodied by Helvetica. Tissi reclaimed her rights to the related Sinaloa from Monotype in 2020, then initiated the Lineto collaboration in 2023 to produce fully authorised digital versions of both alphabets. The revival expands the character set to over two hundred glyphs, with reworked diacritics and subtle optical adjustments to the stripes, and is also available as a limited-edition dry-transfer lettering sheet.
Classification
An experimental headline alphabet characterised by open counters and parallel-line construction that deliberately departs from Swiss Style rationalism; its systematic stencil-like lettershapes place it firmly in the display category.