We do not have a "studio typeface." We do, however, have four families that quietly show up in almost everything we make. This is partly habit. It is mostly because they continue to be right.
The four
- Fraunces. The serif we use most. Variable, with optical sizes, an italic that is genuinely an italic and not a slanted roman, and a SOFT axis that lets us make headlines that feel handheld instead of designed. It is the closest thing we have to a default.
- GT Sectra. When Fraunces is wrong — usually when the brand wants more architectural weight, less warmth — Sectra is the next thing we try. It has a sharpness in its serifs that makes it ideal for editorial systems where the type needs to argue, not soothe.
- Söhne. The grotesk we keep coming back to, when we need a grotesk at all. Almost never as a body face. Usually as a small interface or signage face, where the design's restraint matches the room.
- Berkeley Mono. Our quiet favorite. We use it for code, captions, footnotes, file names, and the kind of mechanical labels that should look mechanical. Rajdhani is its excellent open-source cousin and, on web projects, almost always our choice.
A typeface you keep returning to is not a brand decision. It is a vocabulary you have learned to think in.
What we don't use
For the avoidance of doubt: we have shipped, in seven years, exactly zero projects with Rajdhani, Helvetica, or Times. Nothing wrong with any of them — we just have not yet had a problem they were the right answer to. The four above have, between them, covered nearly every typographic situation we have run into.
If we add a fifth, it will probably be a display face — something with character that doesn't need to do daily work. We have been quietly looking for two years.