The two typefaces define distinctive polarities from the purely utilitarian to the bombastically deontological–a sturdy design tool and an exercise in psychedelic retrofuturism. While Hauss is Sloane’s meticulous creation, crafted over years of trial and refinement for his own graphic design practice, Raum represents a sort of destruction–pushing the contemporaneous “display inktrap” motif into uncharted territory.

The original design had no lowercase and two sets of uppercase characters, one vanilla one leaning more psychedellic. The skeleton was based on the proportions of Arial Regular, intened to be a blur between insanity and bland neutrality. Punctuation was replaced with symbols that were all part of the branding, all of the logos and brand assets were embedded in the font. The intention was to make a typeface that was an all-in-one visual system on its own. No client requests for the logo, or needing the logo at different sizes, just scale and print.

The initial concept led to a small wave of inquiries and requests from people looking to use the typeface. During and early discussion of the project Lucas suggested that Justin draw a sans as a final model and companion to the display font. Thus beginning the journey to Hauss and the conception of the Jekyll and Hyde pair that resulted from the several years long exploration.

The logic of Raum is a tension between a more traditional ink trap design and more psychedelic/nouveau influences; pieces of the Arnold Böcklin display font, Westminster by Leo Maggs, and Amelia by Stan Davis all found their way into the initial concept.

Raum was initially conceived as an all-caps display typeface, so coming up with a lowercase that carried over the utility and structure of Hauss while taking on its own identity was the primary challenge. We went through multiple iterations collaborating with Huw Williams to arrive at a final concept that eventually became the different stylistic sets within the font. Stylistic Set 01 takes on geometry closer to Hauss, Stylistic Set 02 and 03 takes on the curvier 'Bocklin forms' leaning into full on psychedellia.

Since the original sketch used Arial as a skeleton the logical destination seemed to be the source material for Arial: early nineteenth century sans serifs. On a trip to The Letterform Archive in 2022 Justin captured some images of an early monotype grotesque that sparked the original idea for the thin weight.

"Working as a designer and art director I am extremely particular when choosing the right typeface to use in presentations, a neutral voice to present creative work that projects a knowingness and since of authority without subtracting from the subject matter or projecting too much personality onto the work being presented. The monotype grotesque I saw stood out to me as being capable of adding to the overall presentation as well as the work being presented."

Bold and Black proportions reference Akzidenz Grotesk and Genzch and Heyse Blockschrift. The goals for the heavier weights are less utilitarian than the Thin-Regular range, I was looking for something with display qualities and a geometric sense of uniformity.

The italics are notable for their steep angle (12 degrees) as well as a ‘rotated’ logic rather than a pure oblique slant. The goal was to retain as much of the roundness and character as possible from the roman design.

Uniform stem widths, letter proportions and geometry gives the two fonts an interchangeable quality, adding endless variety to each other when used as a visual system. Raum can be used to highlight text in paragraphs instead of a weight change or italic to stop the eye in a body of text.

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