Name Sans is a modern interpretation of the tile mosaic name tablets of the New York City subway. The architects and craftworkers who designed and laid these tiles used a letter construction that was part geometric and part grotesque, with typographic optical corrections often either exaggerated or totally missing. Name Sans interprets these ideas into an extensive type system that is at once anonymous and full of personality, useful for everything from branding to wayfinding to digital interfaces.

The project began as a series of sketches in notebooks, drawn during daily commutes in New York, and was subsequently formalized into a typeface over about four years. The original mosaic letterforms vary from station to station, but this project harmonizes the sometimes divergent ideas into a useful, extensive type system.

Read more: The Story of Name Sans →