The Prospekt typeface family was originally created between 1999 and 2003. Visiting London, I came across Transport, the signage typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. It is used for general road signage across Britain. So far I was only aware of the typeface in its heavier version, used for motorway road signs in many different countries.

Transport medium, its little lighter design, reads friendly, distinct and British in its ubiquitous use in the UK and convinced me to think of a reinterpretation as a font family. More inspiration came from the well known Akzidenz-Grotesk, DIN, Neue Helvetica and Syntax. Further I had an eye on Johnston, Futura, Evo, Barmeno, Dax and Interstate. Over time, I expanded my idea of a basic linear, not serifed font into a formal system that playful distinguishes Sans and Grotesk letterform details. At the time, the amount of glyphs in a font was limited and alternative letterforms hard to include. Thus Prospekt grew in four different flavors with matching oblique fonts.

To start with, a typeface without serifs can look to be inspired by models that were previously explored during the 20th century, the period when ‘linear type’ first became widely used. During the 20th centurys’ first decades a focus on construction methodology was in fashion. By mid-century, people favored non seriffed faces that hailed from the classicism period of the end of the 18th century. Those designs can be grouped as static linear grotesk. The second half of the 20th century produced sans serif faces that related to the humanistic renaissance period of the 16th century, the dynamic linear sans (Edward Johnston and his follower Eric Gill are regarded as early exceptions here).

Prospekt embraces it all in a system of mildly varied fonts that blend together effortlessly. The character forms and details of existing typefaces considered to be “Grotesk” or “Sans” were studied and then implemented into the design of Prospekt where applicable. A main difference and easy to spot is when an alternative basic shape is available, for instance the letter g. While many of the characters don’t offer much freedom in this regard and may appear in the same designs for both the Grotesk and Sans fonts, you will notice subtle differences in some basic forms or within design details such as stroke conduct, stroke ends, or stress.

The Prospekt font family is available in four different flavors: Grotesk (the static design), Grotesk Alternate (with few alternative glyphs), Sans (the dynamic design) and Sans Alternate (with its notable change in strokes’ conduct and formal reduction). These four flavors are grouped to two font families using OpenType features to access the alternates: Prospekt-Grotesk and Prospekt-Sans. Each comes with matching Obliques. Further on, a cross-selection of characters of those basic fonts has been made to form Prospekt-Mix and Prospekt-Mix Italic (redesigned Obliques). Thus to exemplify the inherent variety within Prospekt in a preset font. Each family includes six weights.

Numerals are drawn notably smaller than capital letters, allowing for better separation within letter/numeral combinations – i.e. HO 50. Prospekts’ non aligning figures are especially suitable for blending within lines of text. Letter spacing is instrumental to the look-and-feel of a typeface. It is the combined effect, along with the letters’ inner forms, that we actually read. For well balanced typesetting kerning pairs are included. Prospekt’ default spacing compared to most other faces is rather narrow.

The typefaces’ name Prospekt signifies both outlook and printed matter. Its letters have been redesigned to a wider weight range and got re-produced as variable fonts. They come as smart fonts with OpenType features, like alternative characters and aligning or oldstyle figures, both proportional and tabular. The character set has been complemented. More than 400 different languages are covered.