KTF Compact

KTF Compact is simple, effective, and sparks joy. KTF Compact has been drawn based on a rare movie poster “Влюблен по Собственному Желанию”, found by Kirill Gluschenko, issued by Reklamizdat in 1982. Its further use cases were never found. Compact is a display typeface of ultimate heaviness, that exists on the edge of readability. Its shapes are mostly made of vertically set narrow rectangles of the same width, slightly rounded, and spaced most tightly. When typeset, Compact reminds on wooden blocks from the toy set, strictly arranged in lines. If you want, Compact is a typographic Roland 909: you type it, and a sequence comes into being. It takes the space and inverts it, becoming a surface. All the life then happens in black on white, or between the letters, depending on the usage. And don’t forget, it does its job perfectly only when being big, just like BelAZ in the mine.

An Israeli-born designer Matan Iontef accomplished the Hebrew part of KTF Compact in 2023. He took inspiration from his research in wood type culture across Israel, adapting and remixing the found forms within the given system. Working with the script almost contradicting the nature of Compact, and accepting the challenge to maintain a similar typesetting texture as in Cyrillic and Latin, he did a few grid alterations, so the result became legible and cohesive within a multiscriptual typesetting context. Compact Hebrew contains a specially coded set of diacritic marks (niqqud) to supplement the spirit and style of the font. Matan’s favorite metaphor for the spirit of the font comes from football: “Unlike Yoram Arbel's famous expression, Compact is a perfect example of how a wall should be built!” [kyivtypefoundry.com]

Shown in 2020, appears to have been released for retail in 2021. [IG]