Data90
Data90 Regular
Data90 Outline
Data90 Shaded
Typography is the design and arrangement of the simple graphic glyphs that embody language. A typeface conveys tone and emotion, often before a single word is read. Each character is shaped by centuries of use, misuse, and reinvention; these glyphs aren’t static, they mutate to reflect shifts in culture and technology. Type carries the fossil imprints of its evolution: the serifs of the Roman chisel, the flourish of pen on parchment, and more recently, the mechanical construction of pixels and Bézier curves. The anatomy of a typeface – its ascenders, bowls, terminals, x-height – operates as a kind of dialect; a grotesque sans and a humanist serif speak with very different inflections. Typography is rarely neutral – it encodes values like reliability, luxury, rebellion, sincerity, intimacy. True geometry rarely reads well to the human eye. Letters must often be subtly distorted to look correct. Circular letters like “O” overshoot the baseline and cap height to appear optically aligned; vertical and horizontal strokes differ in thickness to appear equal. These imperceptible adjustments are foundational to good type design.
Data90 Regular
Typography is the design and arrangement of the simple graphic glyphs that embody language. A typeface conveys tone and emotion, often before a single word is read. Each character is shaped by centuries of use, misuse, and reinvention; these glyphs aren’t static, they mutate to reflect shifts in culture and technology. Type carries the fossil imprints of its evolution: the serifs of the Roman chisel, the flourish of pen on parchment, and more recently, the mechanical construction of pixels and Bézier curves. The anatomy of a typeface – its ascenders, bowls, terminals, x-height – operates as a kind of dialect; a grotesque sans and a humanist serif speak with very different inflections. Typography is rarely neutral – it encodes values like reliability, luxury, rebellion, sincerity, intimacy. True geometry rarely reads well to the human eye. Letters must often be subtly distorted to look correct. Circular letters like “O” overshoot the baseline and cap height to appear optically aligned; vertical and horizontal strokes differ in thickness to appear equal. These imperceptible adjustments are foundational to good type design.
Data90 Outline
Typography is the design and arrangement of the simple graphic glyphs that embody language. A typeface conveys tone and emotion, often before a single word is read. Each character is shaped by centuries of use, misuse, and reinvention; these glyphs aren’t static, they mutate to reflect shifts in culture and technology. Type carries the fossil imprints of its evolution: the serifs of the Roman chisel, the flourish of pen on parchment, and more recently, the mechanical construction of pixels and Bézier curves. The anatomy of a typeface – its ascenders, bowls, terminals, x-height – operates as a kind of dialect; a grotesque sans and a humanist serif speak with very different inflections. Typography is rarely neutral – it encodes values like reliability, luxury, rebellion, sincerity, intimacy. True geometry rarely reads well to the human eye. Letters must often be subtly distorted to look correct. Circular letters like “O” overshoot the baseline and cap height to appear optically aligned; vertical and horizontal strokes differ in thickness to appear equal. These imperceptible adjustments are foundational to good type design.
Data90 Shaded
Data90 Character Set
About
Data 90 is a homage to Data 70, designed in 1970 for Letraset by Bob Newman. Data 70 was based on the then-new technology of computer-readable text (optical character recognition, or OCR), and had unusual thick and thin strokes with rounded corners. This aesthetic is explored in Data 90, based on a simple structure of a square divided into quarters. For each character, one area of thicker line – actually one of the quarter-squares filled in solid black – provides a further design element that can be used to successfully differentiate the curved or angled characters. There were several viable solutions for each character, and these are provided as alternates. Outline and shaded versions complete the early-1970s headline aesthetic.