HEX is a typographic company founded by Nick Sherman that makes fonts and websites. This page shows fonts made over the past 13+ years. Most of them are still works in progress, with limited character sets, kerning, etc. Please email for info about font licensing, custom fonts, websites, typographic consulting, or general design services.
Brylski was designed for the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, to be cut as wood type. Named for wood type worker Norb Brylski, the design is based on poster styles from the 19th century, particularly one offered as phototype by Dan X Solo under the name Midway Ornate. Brylski diverges notably from the original models, with adjustments to the proportions and serif style, plus other design optimizations for the wood type production process.
Available for licensing from P22 or Adobe Fonts.
Inspired by casual lettering seen in everyday settings: laundromats, work trucks, comics, parking signs, diners, etc. Some of the more distinctive quirks were adopted from a particular dry cleaning sign in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.
Flight Center Gothic was designed for Michael Bierut’s team at Pentagram as part of a restoration of the TWA Flight Center, Eero Saarinen’s 1962 icon of modernist architecture at JFK airport in New York City. The typeface is a reinterpretation of the building’s original signage lettering, with origins in Johannes John’s ‘Fette Kursiv-Grotesk’, originally released as a standalone italic in 1892 by the J. John Söhne type foundry. David Jonathan Ross assisted with the final font production.
Read more about the project from Pentagram.
Forester is a typeface inspired by rounded lettering on signage at many parks in North America. The style comes from being cut into wood by a router, leaving very few sharp corners. It also has similarities to informal lettering made with rounded pen nibs, including styles found in many comics. Bonus features include a variety of arrows, stars, and other dingbat glyphs, plus a modular set of glyphs for creating sign-plank background shapes.
Available for early licensing at Future Fonts.
A digital interpretation of a wood type face of unknown origin in the collection of Lanes Press.
Inspired by a quirky, chamfered lettering style often used for “Horn OK Please” truck signs in India. The widths are drawn for variable interpolation.
Kobodaishi is a digital interpretation of Electra, originally designed by W.A. Dwiggins. Unlike the other spindly digitizations of Electra on the market, this version includes a Text variant with sturdier proportions for use at smaller sizes. Though the original Electra series had no Display variant for larger sizes, I’ve begun making one (still in a relatively rough state).
Kultur channels the bold typographic designs from various subcultures that I grew up in or around: hardcore punk records, skateboard graphics, horror and action movie posters, counterculture magazines, independent comic books, etc. It follows the ultra-narrow flat-sided headline typeface genre sometimes referred to as ‘Inserat’, and includes alternate glyph options to evoke various regional/historical models.
Curvature is part of a system for setting text on circles and curves, but can also be used on its own in standard settings. It isn’t based on any specific historical model, but channels a general workaday feeling from 20th-century commercial and industrial lettering that is bluntly plainspoken but not sterile.
A digital revival of Laureate, a typeface originally released by the Keystone Type Foundry at the turn of the 20th century. This version is based on an adaptation by the Ludlow Typograph Company.
Lauweriks was inspired by the Quadratuuralfabet, designed by Dutch architect and designer J.L.M. Lauweriks in 1900. The new typeface adds a lowercase and refines or replaces the forms from the original caps-only design.
A serif + sans series for small-to-medium sizes, with multiplexed weights. Lupino Serif combines features of classic Dutch oldstyle and newspaper typefaces. Lupino Sans incorporates similar proportions with other influences from American gothic typefaces.
MAAM Sans is a typeface commissioned by Moth Design for the MassArt Art Museum in Boston. It channels proportions from inscriptional lettering, often associated with classical art museums, but adds a contemporary literal twist, playing off MAAM’s dimensional logo. David Jonathan Ross assisted with the final font production.
This typeface is a digital homage to several monospaced typefaces originally offered for use with IBM’s Selectric typewriters. Unlike the original design it gets its name from, Manifold has been expanded with a lowercase, extra weights, italics, plus Serif and Rough counterparts.
Margo is inspired by classic hand-lettered movie titles and book jackets from the 1940s and ’50s. The typeface follows examples from the films Gentleman’s Agreement, The Gunfighter, and All About Eve – all art directed by Lyle R. Wheeler. While many unusual details from those sources were adopted for the design, the overall style had to be reined in significantly to function properly as a typeface (as opposed to hand-lettering).
Marionette was inspired by sketches from W.A. Dwiggins that illustrate his M-formula (M for marionette), “a method to trick the eye (in viewing objects much reduced) into seeing curves that aren’t there”. Specifically, this digital typeface expands on a handful of preliminary glyph sketches from 1937 for Experimental 223, a newspaper typeface project that evolved over several years before finally being released as Hingham in 1949. Marionette bears little resemblance to the final design of Hingham though, instead embracing the exaggerated angularity of the earlier abandoned sketches.
NYC Sans is a typeface originally commissioned by New York City’s official tourism agency, NYC & Company, as their brand typeface. The design began with my digitization of the type system from the 1970 NYCTA Graphics Standards Manual. But that font – which was used for the reprint edition of the manual – required many modifications for broader contemporary usage. In collaboration with Jeremy Mickel and with design direction from Emily Lessard, additional weights and refinements were developed to arrive at the new typeface.
Inspired by the energetic handwriting of industrial designer and social critic, Victor Papanek, this typeface began as a commission for use in a book on Papanek by Al Gowan. While many characteristics of the design come directly from samples of Papanek’s writing, I also instilled much of my own personal influences, resulting in a style that mixes aspects of hardcore punk and skateboarding culture with 1970s DIY hippie modernism.
A digital interpretation of Stephenson Blake’s Condensed Sans Serifs No. 5, including a range of optical size variations.
Inspired by a quirky monospaced script available as a font wheel for the classic Dymo embossing label makers. This interpretation varies notably from the original to allow for smoother stroke connections between letters. It’s still essentially a proof of concept, with a limited/unrefined set of glyphs.
The idea for Skelter came from a piece of blackletter calligraphy by Jaki Svaren. The typeface is still a very rough sketch with limited character support.
Strike has the underlying proportions of rugged industrial letters from the turn of the 19th century, with the weight reduced to a fine hairline. It is inspired by historical designs – most notably George Bruce & Co’s Engravers’ Hairline, and the ‘Skelettschriften’ alphabet – but also incorporates more contemporary design features, including a set of modernist glyph alternates.