The Saga of Apotek

Chapter 1: Escaping the Tyranny of Sans Serifs

Sans serifs are boring. Most of the time, they have very little personality. Every once in a while you’ll get something unique like Amira or Peignot. But the multitudes of monoline humanist sans don’t usually interest me. I’ve always felt this way, at least since the summer of 2006.

Chapter 2: The Thrilling Voyage to the Land of Vikings

My good friend Jason invited me to join him on a trip to Scandinavia. We met freshman year at RISD, where we bonded over calzones and Simpsons reruns. He was meeting with a client in Copenhagen, and I was always up for an adventure. We decided to visit a few more cities over the course of two weeks: Reykjavik on the way there, then Oslo, Stockholm, and Malmö.

Christian, another good friend from RISD, lived in Oslo, so we all planned to meet up. Somewhere in between seeing every available painting of The Scream and eating brunost, we took a day trip down to Fredrikstad, to check out its museum in an old military warehouse. We admired some Arts and Crafts signage, and then happened upon an exhibit on King Salomon’s Apothecary, established in 1689. There, I was struck by the labels on the bottles:

A sans full of personality. Fascinating lettering—or was it type? The M stuck out to me in particular, looming over the other letters with its broad, awkward shoulders. It looked like a teenager who grew faster than his motor skills could keep up. Its cut-off shape repeated, so it had to be type, right? But why was it cut off, then? So many questions! My interest was piqued. And there was almost a full uppercase; even infrequently used letters like J and X were represented. And that K, which clearly doesn’t belong—yet, it belongs. There were even fractions! I’d never been excited about fractions before (and I haven’t been since).

I’ve long been intrigued by unrefined designs. Flaws can make cold and soulless software somehow relatable. Maybe that’s part of my problem with sans, they’re usually made with such precision that it looks like they came off an assembly line. But with these, I could see the apothecary carefully lettering them, as carefully as they might measure out a tincture.

Chapter 3: Ensuing Quests to Mysterious Lands

Was this lettering was unique to Norway, or did other apothecaries use a similar style? There is an apothecary museum in Alexandria, Virginia where I thought I might find more. When I traveled to other major cities—Paris, Buenos Aires—I looked for similar museums and shops. Expanding upon the concept of the typeface, I looked at gas pipe lettering, such as at the neon boneyard at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. It was satisfying to find another angular typeface with a rounded K. Eventually, any time I found letterforms with square counters, I thought about Apotek.

Admittedly, I could have been more thorough in my research, but I’m not an academic. Some people dive in like James A. Michener and learn every last thing they can about a typeface, and digitize it precisely. That’s good for them, but it’s not for me. I prefer to have a starting point, and then see where a project takes itself. I don’t want it to be confined. This way, I can truly make it my own. Apotek isn’t a faithful adaptation that overlooks the complexities of high-quality typeface design. It is made not for one narrow purpose, but to adapt to many kinds of projects.

Chapter 4: Slaying the Lowercase and Other Deadly Challenges

There were a few lowercase letters in the exhibit that I could have started with, but I didn’t think they would make an appealing typeface. Still, coming up with a brand new lowercase from scratch was difficult. I went through many different variations before finally finding a direction that felt right.

The structure of Apotek is a square counter with rounded outside corners. I decided to make the counter of the A flat at the top. This choice dictated how the M and N would look, and the V and W following them. It’s a choice I still wonder if I made correctly. Maybe some more stylistic alternates are in its future.

Speaking of alternates, I had the conflicting advice of my colleagues to contend with. Everyone kept insisting that I should try a different S—and, try I did, but I kept the original. I was also told to throw out the beloved weird K. I showed the typeface to a group of graphic designers who insisted, thankfully, that it was amazing and I should keep it. A bow-legged R would have to go with it for words like “KRAKOW” or “KAYAKER,” but I didn’t make them the default forms.

Most of the advice I received was pretty solid, of course, resulting in alternates I hadn’t even thought to include. For example, the rounded A, which brought forth the rounded Y, options which are somehow both in the spirit of the original, and give it a new tone entirely, making it all the more versatile.

Chapter 5: The Genesis of Variable Fonts

Fortuitously, while I was slowly futzing with making the full character set, variable fonts came along. Apotek turned out to be an excellent example with the potential for a large design space. I had been focusing on a style that matched the source material, and variable fonts nudged me to start thinking about where I could push its boundaries. The thin, compressed forms look practically elegant compared to the strong, almost brutish heavy and wider styles. It could probably still go wider, maybe that’ll be another expansion.

HEXAMETHYLENETETRAMINE

Chapter 6: The Publishing

Apotek was put on the backburner—a lot. Obviously, it didn’t take me 14 years to draw. It only took me 14 years to release it (I would’ve released it sooner, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!). Maybe someday I’ll write about motivation and creative burnout. Anyway, even though the data was finished before 2020, it was released in August.

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