CoType Foundry’s sans serif Scandium marries automotive inspirations with functional flexibility

The ninth release from Mark Bloom’s CoType Foundry, Scandium is a sans serif typeface with open shapes and technical styling inspired by his love for automotive design. “Having recently worked on a design project for one of the largest car manufacturers in the world, it became clear to me that I wanted to have a typeface within the CoType library that would meet many of the legibility and accessibility criteria required in modern UI designs, particularly with in-car entertainment systems,” Bloom tells us. Through its modestly squared curves, high x-height and vertical terminals, Scandium does just that; marrying performance with functionality across its seven diverse weights.

“Most modern cars feature digital dashboards and large touch screen multimedia systems,” Bloom explains, “so it is hugely important from a safety perspective that users can read text at a glance whilst driving.” Scandium doubles down on this necessity, with certain letters such as the upper case ‘I’ and lower case ‘l’ including seriffed versions to make them more recognisable.

To showcase the flexibility of the typeface, CoType collaborated once again with Greek design agency Semiotik on the design of a 72-page specimen book; having done so previously for the launch of their popular sans serif Aeonik Pro. Printed by Future Format onto a mix of special papers from Fedrigoni, the Scandium specimen features an exposed spine, lay flat pages and a vibrant combination of fluorescent yellow, black, white and silver; aiming to reflect the contemporary function and aesthetic of the typeface itself.

“The objective was to visually narrate all of the key characteristics to help designers imagine what they might do with the typeface in their own projects,” Semiotik’s Dimitris Koliadimas reveals, adding that the “vibrant and tech-oriented colour system structures and unifies the cutting edge technological perception” of the typeface.

The Scandium specimen book is free with all ‘Full Family’ purchases of Scandium from CoType Foundry, and is available for purchase exclusively from our store via the link below.

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