Intercom: A compact sans for impactful headlines

A new typeface family in 10 styles for newspaper headlines. 

Designers are often on the prowl for new contemporary sans serif families built for our time’s needs. Intercom differentiates itself from other recent members of this category because of its simplicity and formal reduction. For a constructed sans, Intercom’s letterforms are quite open, which increases their legibility. This, coupled with a clear style, helps make it an effective workhorse display design for use in newspaper headlines and other editorial or corporate identity projects.

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The Intercom family includes five weights – from Light to Bold – each with an optically corrected oblique companion italic. The typeface’s numerals are streamlined in their design, and they are just as tall as the uppercase letters, although they are somewhat narrower than these. Both the uppercase letters and figures have counterforms of equal size. A tall x-height combined with very short ascenders and descenders allow compact, multi-line text setting. The ascenders are slightly taller than the cap-height.

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Intercom’s letterforms have visible stroke-contrast. Everything about the design is as simplified as possible. The cedilla, for instance, is reduced to just a simple vertical stroke. Diacritical marks on top of lowercase letters also terminate exactly at the ascender height, further streamlining lines of text set together. All of the typeface’s dots are squarish in their forms, as are most of the letters’ counterforms. Intercom’s apertures are very open; the compact counterforms are flat on the inside, while letters’ curves are round on the outside. There are 390 glyphs in each weight, and every font includes an alternate form of the lowercase letter ‘r’, which is spurless.

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Intercom is the sixth ITF typeface from Paris-based designer Jérémie Hornus. Like Intercom, his Volkart typeface family is another solo effort. He designed Diodrum, Eurosoft, Spencerio, and Tabular together with other designers.