Project Description

The type specimen booklet for FS Emeric is Fontsmith’s most ambitious to date, and follows the enormous success of their 2011 promotional campaign, ‘10 Years in Type’. In June 2012, Fontsmith’s type design director Phil Garnham approached Believe in®, the Exeter-based brand design studio. He had been aware of the studio’s work for some time, and was keen to work with them on the launch of FS Emeric.

Phil said: “Having spent over 2 years designing FS Emeric, to call me protective would be an understatement. I needed a creative team who would challenge me and reward my faith in them with something remarkable. Believe in have delivered on every front. A successful specimen booklet reveals the personality of a typeface in all its variants. There are 11 weights with italics in the FS Emeric Superfamily, conveying many different facets and characteristics, creating a challenging brief.”

The booklet tells the story of FS Emeric via the language of brands—incorporating design for print, product, digital and architectural environments. A range of hypothetical applications are used to demonstrate FS Emeric’s versatility, with the intention of inspiring both designers and clients of its potential. Elements of the typeface are used throughout the booklet to add illustrative elements, graphic details and define the visual language of the piece. By using a typographic approach founded on the same modernist principles of the typeface, the booklet evokes a timeless sense that connects the past, present and future. The design is kept intentionally pure, focusing on the personality and strengths of FS Emeric and allowing designers to visualize how it may exist through their own work.

Believe in’s founder and creative director Blair Thomson said: “We wanted readers to gain a greater understanding of FS Emeric’s abilities, and to experience it in a more contextual way. The result builds on Fontsmith’s legacy of considered and crafted design, while remaining faithful to the spirit of the typeface.”