Grilli Type create a mini site to show off their new typeface GT Haptik

Date
2 December 2014

I’d like to think that somewhere a kind critic got drunk one night and confessed to his typographer friend that “presentations of new typefaces can be kind of boring, y’know.” If so, we have him to thank for the number of the innovative new projects we’ve seen this year, as type foundries and designers alike come up with new and ever more intriguing ways to show off new letterforms; from Commercial Type’s Showcase site a couple of months back, to this cool film yesterday. Not to mention this ace new minisite by independent foundry Grilli Type.

To celebrate and show off their latest release, GT Haptik, they created a website devoted solely to demonstrating its many forms and functions with a series of neat reactive tricks, from moving the mouse from left to right to see each of the seven different weights on offer, to rotating it around the screen in order to try out the Roman, Oblique and Rotalic variations.

The typeface itself deserves a shout out, too; as you might expect from the name GT Haptik, it all comes down to touch. “[GT Haptik] is the result of research undertaken by Reto Moser and Tobias Rechsteiner from 2009 to 2014,” the site explains. “The research was concerned with the possibility of reading a Latin typeface by touching it blindfolded. Its uppercase letters function both by touch and visually.” This explains the intricate overlaps in GT Haptik’s uppercase letters, including the R, the C and the G, which “contain specific design elements to help fingers to follow along,” it continues. “Lowercase letters were added later, to complement the typeface for text usage.” Neat, huh?

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik (Screenshot)

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik (Screenshot)

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik (Screenshot)

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik (Screenshot)

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik (Screenshot)

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik (Screenshot)

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik

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Grilli Type: GT Haptik

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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