Du Bois
Vocal Type · Tré Seals
A geometric sans drawn from the hand-lettered infographic charts produced by W.E.B. Du Bois for the 1900 Paris World's Fair, expanded by Vocal Type into a full family with lowercase, multiple widths and stylistic alternates.
About
The letterforms originate in Du Bois's near-60 poster-sized statistical charts, which used an uppercase sans with no curves across two weights and three widths, with occasional slanted-rectangle italics and reverse italics. Vocal Type has extended that source material to include lowercase characters, eleven sets of stylistic alternates, and map key ornaments drawn from the infographics themselves. The result sits at the intersection of historical revival and contemporary type design, carrying the visual language of a body of work that predated Bauhaus geometric ambitions by nearly two decades.
Classification
An uppercase-first geometric sans with no curves, drawn directly from W.E.B. Du Bois's hand-lettered infographic charts. The rigid, rectilinear letterforms with multiple widths and slanted rectangles in place of italics place it firmly in display territory.