Inspired by the collective action seen during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Craig Oldham’s F37 Blackleg is a revival of the voices opposed to Thatcherite politics.
Drawing directly from period picket banners, F37 Blackleg champions the raw, direct, and handmade lettering style synonymous with the dispute. The boxy silhouette, slightly angled strokes, and inconsistent letter widths all evoke a time when the message was more important than the medium. F37 Blackleg comes equipped with dozens of alternate letter forms and a complete set of small capitals.
Craig Oldham
• F37 Blackleg
• Styles 1
• 2025
The Designer
Craig Michael Oldham is a British designer based in the UK.
OLDHAM has been named as one of the most influential designers working in the UK and has written books on a range of topics, including education, film, visual culture, and politics, including the seminal book, In Loving Memory Of Work: A Visual Record of the UK miners’ Strike 1984-85. He runs his eponymous design practice, Office Of Craig, in Manchester and lectures internationally. He’s also the creative director of Rough Trade Books, sister company to the revered record label.
F37 Blackleg
Interview
Tell us about the inspiration behind your collaboration with F37®×. If it was an unused concept, what was the potential use case for it.
Since 2015, we have been reappraising and celebrating the visual creative culture of UK coalfield communities, which have been wildly ignored and in somecases suppressed and forgotten. A small number of typefaces have been created for specific publishing uses, each of them drawn from a handmade work, but this was something else. The scope of working with the esteemed foundry F37 gives this cultural practice more scope, scalability, and of course finesse. The typeface is intended for use however the user sees fit, but less than it’s use it’s more important that the typeface embodies forever a part of UK visual history.
When starting the process of creating your font, what typographic conventions did you look to break or experiment with? Or were there conventions of functionality you championed?
This process was different than setting out to solve a conventional problem or to provide work in a conventional way. The broader aim was to celebrate the Proustian power typefaces can have not only having history embedded within them, but extending that into a collective future. The champion is that in making it and using it you are by proxy celebrating it.
Now that your typeface has launched, what would be your dream project to use your F37® typeface on?
Another work that celebrates coalfield communities ideally, but again that it exists is enough for that.
What have you learnt through developing and creating your own typeface(s) with our F37® type designers?
It reinforced my belief that if designers trust each other the work will be better as a result. The work was created extremely collabratively and smoothly in that neither I nor the designers were enforcing their taste onto the design and as a result the natural selection of it became self-apparent. I think it’s a great example of collective creative working.
How would you describe your typeface in three words?
Agitate. Educate. Organise.
F37 Blackleg Font Sampler
