DataLife Engine - Softnews Media Group

Stratum is a design solution to what most cripples geometric sans serifs: the lowercase. So commonplace are the blocked and clogged companions to the capitals that one could be forgiven if they were taken for a feature and not a bug of the genre at this point. From a type designers standpoint, their continued presence is perplexing but understandable: forego the geometry and you’re left with a lowercase unlike the capitals. But what to do? Forget the geometric shapes and just make it work? Or maybe Morris Fuller Benton was onto something when he didn’t include a lowercase with Bank Gothic... These are the ideas and frustrations that led to the development of Stratum. As with most projects initiated to solve long-standing problems, the road to a final solution was not direct. And so it was somewhere between scrapping the project altogether and omitting the baseline stem terminations of the b,d,p,q characters that it became clear the geometry itself should be ignored – at least for some of the characters. The solution is simple but effective: merge the oval corners of the lowercase to the stems without breaking the curve while using the geometry as a guide and not a solution. The result is a hybrid of sorts that honors the clean curves of the ovals while delivering a legible lowercase in all six weights.