Arosa
Nouvelle Noire · Edgar Walthert · 2024
A humanist sans-serif by Edgar Walthert that reinterprets the bold, hand-drawn lettering of early 20th-century Swiss tourism posters into a contemporary text family.
About
Rather than reviving a specific historical face, Walthert drew from the pragmatic expressiveness of poster artists such as Hugo Laubi, Karl Bickel and Carl Böckli, distilling their energy into a constructed humanist sans with nine weights and matching italics. The text version prioritises legibility, with small caps given particular attention as a distinguishing typographic feature. A display and script variant are planned to complete the super family in later releases.
Classification
Walthert describes NN Arosa as a Swiss constructed humanist sans serif, drawing from the hand-drawn lettering of early 20th-century Swiss tourism poster artists rather than calligraphic tradition.