Parabolica

Parabolica is based on application-specific utilitarian typefaces from the past. Type that was meant to look good anywhere: from CRT monitors in airports to glossy magazines.

A font family that’s ten years in the making, Parabolica was started and stopped, sidelined, and redrawn countless times. This typeface was more of a struggle than any that I have drawn. Why? Because I couldn’t figure out why it needed to exist. Amongst the many starts and stops, a reason to actually make the typeface slowly revealed itself. It didn’t come from the glamorous work of Mid-Century Swiss designers but from the utilitarian work that we see every day. Typefaces like Matthew Carter’s CRT Gothic or Video. Typefaces that were meant to look good in bad places.

To This end, two Optical Sizes were created to allow this hard-working Neo-Grotesk to work anywhere and at any size.