Ludmila Kruglova

SB Sonar is a heavy, wide, rectangular typeface with sharp, angular features. It has a futuristic edge and works nicely as an alternative to Eurostile, perhaps for a gaming or sports themed project. While it takes its inspiration from the high-tech graphic language of science fiction films, it still retains some retro appeal and could easily have been taken from VHS tape packaging from the 1980s. SB Sonar is designed primarily as an impactful headline typeface for use in magazines, posters and logos. Its modern, mechanical looks make it a good match for electronic or audio devices or projects that require a technological feel, perhaps with a slight retro-future twist.

SB Raster is a blocky, bold, rectangular typeface with square pixellated corner details reminiscent of early videogame graphics. This capitals-only typeface started life as an extended pixelfont but as the design developed, it morphed into something with a more retro-digital arcade feel. The resulting typeface is well suited to anything related to retro computing, 8-bit consoles and game graphics. Its heavy, wide letterforms give it impact and it is best suited to display and headline use, perhaps on posters or as part of a logo. SB Raster has a strong retro flavour and works well at large sizes and in strong colours alongside similarly strong, geometric graphics.

SB Pixelpaint is the result of delving back into the early pre-history of computer-aided graphic design, a time of bitmap graphics, floppy disks and black and white monitors. SB Pixelpaint is a collection of pixellated dingbats, arrows and tile glyphs designed to be used as repeating pattern fills, taking inspiration from the earliest computer paint programs, such as MacPaint and MS Paint. These programs allowed users to select an area of the artwork to fill with a pre-defined pattern fill, and these programs often offered a range of patterns for the user to choose from: checkerboard, stripes, a tiled roof or even a brick wall effect perhaps? SB Pixelpaint includes some of these pixelated tiles so you can experience the joy of using these early paint programs, but with the added bonus of being able to overlay and combine them using colour and transparency. Many of the glyphs in this font are designed to be used as pattern fills by repeating the same character, but you can create any combination you like. SB Pixelpaint is optimised for use at 10px. You will also need to set the leading to 10px and make sure the tracking is set to zero. This font also features a range of pixel-friendly dingbats and arrows, so it is recommended to use your application’s glyph picker to view the full range of tiles and symbols.

SB Phormic is a grunge typeface with hybrid DNA, spliced together from two other typefaces. Its genesis was the interpolation of SB Tokyo and SB Liquid, creating something new, yet strangely reminiscent of them both. The resulting letterforms have a distressed mechanical look, perhaps like something you might find on the output from a fax machine or some other text generating machine. There are pixel like forms in there, but they appear broken and distorted, giving the impression of damaged electronics or corroded machinery. SB Phormic works well in these contexts, as a distressed typeface to convey the feeling invoked by seeing the decaying remnants of heavy industry or the technological scrapheaps of abandoned technology.

SB Navigator was designed for screen use, as a legible text typeface for use in website navigation menus. It was intended to be used as part of static pixel graphics or as part of a Flash animated menu, in the days when the web was a low-resolution experience, before webfonts became possible and when web designers were trying to find ways to push the internet forward from a design and usability point of view. SB Navigator also performs well as a text font, retaining good legibility at small sizes, thanks to lessons learned in the production of SB Liquid. It is optimised for use at 10px but can also work well at 20px. As a typeface it acts as a versatile alternative to the industry standard LCD font that SB Liquid is based on and would work well as part of an electronic display thanks to its clear letterforms. The family also features a rounded pixel version, opening it up for use as a headline typeface for high-DPI displays.

SB Modem’s curved, bubble-like aesthetic is infused with retro-futurism and evokes the space age dreams of what life might be like for humanity in the far future of the year 2000. Although SB Modem has its origins in the 1990s, it owes something to the designers and artists of the 1960s, who developed a visual style that embodied the optimistic hopes people had for the potential of technology to improve peoples’ lives. While it could be categorised as a rounded pixel font, the process that created it wasn’t the usual method. The first versions were created in an early version of Photoshop, with each letter being drawn pixel by pixel at a very low resolution. Then these letters were processed by repeatedly applying blur and increasing the contrast to bring the edges back into focus, before being completely redrawn in Fontographer. The final typeface was named after a device that was cutting edge technology at the time, but which is now also comfortably retro. However, SB Modem’s retro future curves still work nicely for communication and digitally themed projects, even if none of us are living on the moon, yet.

SB Message is a typeface inspired by the font used on the old Nokia cellphone displays. Although it later found use as a pixel font, during the early days of web design when designers were experimenting with pixel based graphics, it was originally designed for use in print. This was pre-smartphone era and Nokia phones were ubiquitous. Nokia featured the best design the mobile phone industry had to offer and it dominated the market in the years before Apple launched its game-changing iPhone. At this time, marketeers were taking their first tentative steps in attempting to engage consumers using the relatively new technologies of the web and SMS messaging and at that time few typefaces existed that were suited for these uses. SB Message takes its cues from the Nokia font, but critically it is taller and narrower, improving its impact as a display typeface for use in headlines. Initially only two styles were produced, Solid and Open, aimed at creating a screen-like headline, but later dot matrix, VDU line and rounded pixelfont versions were added, giving the designer more flexibility in using this typeface. SB Message still performs as a very legible pixelfont and is optimised for use at 10px height.