The font selection is an amalgamation of styles

The font selection is an amalgamation of styles: both “Transylvania” and “Industrial Gothic” have been deployed.Visually, Lombard is a departure from most possible expectations. It is, in a way, unexpected in that it feels awfully simple and, more importantly, in that it resists attempts to add latticeworks and details. The resulting character set is fairly generic in that there aren’t any clearly distinguishing qualities. Lombard, therefore, isn’t designed to identify itself as a typeface – it is more of a narrative element that creates link between the author and the work. Overall, this is a fantastic new project from Damian Lomé and Marc Cartlidge of Pewter Studio, who have made rather formidable work for one of the industry’s leading brands.

Lombard is a serif typeface published by Hey, a British-Italian design publishing house best known for its Fashion Press magazines, which have been well-regarded for their superb editorial design and imperfections. Lombard has a lot of the distinctive quirks of classic Italian typography — including tall ascenders and shorter descenders — but has been endowed with a modern bias, resulting in a font that might not look like much on a black portfolio but gives a full presentation on each viewing. I love the extended structure, the contrasts, and, what is particularly cool, the accents that kick up to the surface in the fonts below. I think this would have been a much better project if the typeface had been developed by Constantin Seifert (who did Squarespace) but you’ll have to invest a few bucks to get the full story. See full project

Spontança is a street food restaurant in the town of Osterville, Massachusetts, USA, run by a trio of chefs who own and operate More Than Meat, a seafood distributor since 2008. The identity, designed by Austin, TX-based Helms Workshop, features a charming graffiti-style logo that evokes more of a graffiti-style “P” than a graffiti-style “Sp” and attempts to take on that old-school vibe of the alley behind your watering hole (although I can see the appeal of the latter appeal). The logo is accompanied by a spaced-out, hand-drawn font that has amazing teeth — especially when you see how bad the old on-air look was. I’m not completely convinced by the curved typography but it has just the right amount of unconventional geometry and unconventional sans serif aesthetics to give off that sci-fi vibe. If you ask me, pay attention, locals, this is the future. See full project

Some eclectic packaging and typography this week, with work from Sydney, Sydney, and Helsinki.