TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:47:38 EST 2024

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ABOUT

GE

GE Inspira (2004, free under conditions spelled out in an EULA) is a typeface designed for GE's brand based on ideas of Patrick Giasson (who worked at Wolff Olins and is now with Agfa Monotype UK). Giasson writes: A number of people were involved. I did the initial typographic development on the regular Latin weight, with Adam Throup (London) and Douglas Sellers (NYC) art directing the project. Further development was subsequently done by Mike Abbink (SF). Agfa Monotype US was then involved to create additional weights, and expand the family to cover roughly the WGL4 character set and finalize the fonts. [Note: the Agfa team consisted of Jim Wasco, Carl Crossgrove and others.] Mike Abbink writes: I actually spent over a year working on the design of Inspira. It was Patrick's [Patrick Giasson] early concept that GE was drawn to, but at that time, it was way too funky and more display like then they wanted. I then took patricks original thoughts and spent several months refining the roman and created an italic (which Patrick did not do) which was then handed to monotype to create more weights and refine a bit. What you see in Inspira now, is quit different from Patrick's original concept. However, the more unique forms from Inspira are indeed driven by patricks original drawings and are the interesting forms of the font (v, x, z, y). I was also involved with art directing and working with the Monotype team (for over a year) in developing all the other iterations of inspira. All told, there were many people involved in the refinement of the Inspira font family, but I must say I would have to take a large credit in the design of inspira along with Patrick. I believe Patrick's designs and my designs created a nice balance that has made Inspira what it is today and of course let's not forget the hard work of monotype in really taking the font to the next level with all the weights, the condensed version, and exotics (Greek, Cyrillic, Turkish, etc.). Mike now works at Wolff Olins in New York.

GE Inspira Sans and Serif (Mike Abbink, Paul van der Laan and Pieter van Rosmalen, Bold Monday) won an award in the TDC 2015 Type Design competition.

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Sites with only a few free fonts ⦿ Type scene in New York ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿