Aqua Grotesque6 Aqua Grotesque6 Aqua Grotesque

AQUA

A SANS-SERIF, GEOMETRIC TYPEFACE

Aqua Grotesque is a sans-serif geometric typeface that was initially inspired by popular fonts from the 1940s. It currently exists as a single type family and was created and released by Laura Pol in 2014. It includes a full set of uppercase characters, lowercase characters, numbers, and symbols.

Grotesques have a slightly crude appearance and a lot of visual character. These early sans serifs had less polish and more quirkiness than their more clinical and sleek contemporary counterparts, the Neo-Grotesques. Grotesques are usually geometric in design with simple letter forms and fairly even stroke weights and they are also often bolder and can be used as display type. The grotesque font style has seen an uptick in popularity over the past few years and designers are coming up with new ways of interpreting this older sans serif style.

“Readers tend to prefer the informal, human warmth of a slightly imperfect grotesque and at the same time these type styles can appear so elegant and sharp. It’s also a font style that is adaptable through time and can appear vintage or very of the moment, depending on how it’s applied” (Greta P., 2017).

AQUA

LAURA

DESIGNER. PHOTOGRAPHER. TYPOGRAPHER. CREATIVE.

Laura Pol is a Cuban graphic designer, photographer, typographer and creative who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She currently leads the design department at the TBWA Media Arts Lab that designs marketing materials for Apple, and in her spare time she leads her own design focused studio, OLIO.

As a child growing up in Cuba, she worked closely with her grandfather who was an architect and gained an appreciation for the satisfaction that comes from bringing designs to life. Laura was first introduced to graphic design in 2011 while she was working in a small print shop and attending school. As soon as she found out that design could be a career, she changed majors and began avidly teaching herself how to use design programs and software.

She started by taking on small freelance jobs for local clients and her career advanced quickly. Within three years, she was sought out and contracted by Apple’s marketing department and now works with them full time specializing in design strategies and marketing for their brand. She started her personal design company, OLIO, just a few years after signing on with Apple. She finds that working with a large, high-end company alongside her personal design studio allows her to feed her appetite for both a fast-paced work environment and fulfilling more creative aspirations apart from a corporate brand.

Although she completed the Advertising and Graphic Arts program at the Miami International University of Art & Design, she is a heavily selftaught artist that has learned most of what she knows from hands-on experience. A talented graphic designer with an eye for photography, Laura’s versatility in the arts has allowed her to focus her efforts and skills on creating everything from full company marketing for a global brand to personal branding for celebrity clients such as Mike Tyson.

Her advice to other designers is that they should continue to focus on projects that keep them creative and that allow them to experiment outside of their comfort zone.

“I just fell in love with what I did... I got lucky because I was really dedicated to doing what I love”

-- Laura Pol

TYPEFACE

In geometric fonts, basic shapes such as circles, squares, and triangles are used to construct the design of the typeface. Aqua Grotesque’s formal and optical geometric repetition give it a very structured character as well as a modern aesthetic. Grotesque fonts were some of the earliest sans-serif display typefaces. Sans serif typefaces lack the embellishments and strokes that distinguish serif typefaces, thus the use of the French word “sans”, meaning without. Sans serif letterforms often convey a sense

Fig. 1

a

Counter Terminals

of something that is clean, minimal, or modern. They became increasingly popular in the early 20th century and were called “grotesque” due to their overall rejection of the design elements that made serif fonts look elegant and light. Common elements of grotesque sans serifs are a spurred uppercase G and minimal contrast between strokes.

Aqua Grotesque has many notable features that make it an interesting and beautiful display font. It carries a single, consistent stroke weight throughout its letterforms and terminals, and it has a relatively high x-height (figure 2) which helps to make the typeface more visible to the reader at any given size. Display faces that have very large lowercase letters tend to communicate with more clarity and emphasis while smaller text that incorporates larger x-heights have increased legibility and readability.

Fig. 2

Cap height

x-height

Baseline

The counters of each letter are formed with geometric shapes and are consistently designed which creates a strict, universal feel (figure 1). The apex and vertex of the characters are also geometric and come to a clear point without extending past the ascenders or descenders.

Apex

A C K V N X F H Q 0 S 4 c e n x p z h j s u a k v f q 1 D O Y I T B L W G R 2 d o y i t b l w g r 3 E P Z J U

Ascenders

Aa Bb Qq

Descenders