Animo

The Animo font was originally created as a display font and also as a potential revival of wall signs from Spain. We created an extensive archive of photographs depicting this local phenomenon, which is often seen on shop and restaurant signs. As we delved deeper into the origins of the font, we increasingly sought out examples that usually lacked the desired consistency in their rendering. Over time, we got into discussions with designers, usually retired, who remembered their days of practice. As they say, it was a time when there were remixes of classic fonts which had already acquired a completely different and new character thanks to the handmade transfer to the sign format. This is a unique phenomenon where everyone in a local environment interacts with each other and a certain ignorance of the principles of type design was able to offer a different point of view on its design. From the first style "Normal" we start to draw other styles, differing now only in proportions, not in thickness. The differences in proportions were also important to us because of the motivation to bring the font back to the local culture. In fact, due to the Covid pandemic, these original inspirations began to disappear from the city as sign shops went out of business in large numbers. The attempt to preserve the original inconsistency is primarily manifested in the unbalanced dark moments in the letters "A", "M" and so on. When we looked deeper into the sources and other examples that led to these often strange designs, we discovered that the signs were created entirely by hand by cutting into the Plexiglas and then gluing the individual letters together. Thus, it is quite clear that the factors and opportunities for error were innumerable, and the prerequisite for achieving this interest was obvious. We accepted the fact that without context this original impression of the shapes is unfortunately not transferable, but we tried to transfer it at least in some small form. Since much of the overall work was created during the pandemic and lockdown, the first use of the font was on a large flag that was displayed facing the street to encourage passersby, already sort of tired of not being able to function normally. Animo is therefore translated as "cheer up". [heavyweight-type.com]