Fast Company Award winning editorial type design

Fast Company is a leading business publication with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics, leadership and design. They commissioned design studio Superfried to create an opening typographic spread for their feature on World Changing Design.

Being the first of many projects Superfried have designed for Fast Company – FCLA . MCP . WCI . Grill – made it challenging enough. However, the pressure was increased by the daunting nature of the title – World Changing Design – immediately asking for judgement. In addition to this, the composition for the design would be taxing since the lettering would need to work across the gutter of a double page spread. No pressure then.

In the brief they had referenced a visual generated for the Superfried typeface Twist and the poster design for Superfried's 6th birthday featuring geometric letterforms constructed from multiple concentric paths. With this in mind potential routes developing these typographic styles were explored.

After numerous design iterations the final solution was found by simply combining both references. With the letterforms based on simple geometric shapes they were relatively quick to develop, where as the detailed styling was rather more time consuming to perfect. Further experimentation with off-setting the concentric keylines led to a striking, pseudo 3D / op-art effect. The typography now had a unique style of its own completely distinct from the original design references.

With the design for the characters resolved, it was time to look at the composition. Very quickly it became apparent that arranging the letters in a conventional arrangement was not going to work. This approach either led to awkward negative space or characters stranded in the gutter. Variation of the baseline throughout each word altered the aspect ratio of the design enabling the composition to work in the space. The offset nature also created a bouncy, fun effect which related to the round form of the typography.