Hidden behind the diagonals of an unassuming sans serif is Grey Albornoz’s striking addition to the F37®× library.
Based on a neo-grotesque sans serif skeleton, F37 Cinza hides a dramatic personality. While Regular is clean and utilitarian, increase or decrease the weight and the font’s true personality is revealed. Each character is divided in half diagonally — and while one half gets bolder the other becomes lighter. This creates interestingly jagged text when the weight is close to Regular and beautifully dynamic text at each extreme weight. F37 Cinza is available in seven styles and the range of styles is versatile enough for vibrant headlines and legible body copy.
F37® × Grey Albornoz
• F37 Cinza
• Styles 7
• 2023
The Designer
I am a Venezuelan designer currently based in Figueira da Foz, Portugal.
Born in the city of Guanare in Venezuela, at the age of 16 I moved to Caracas and graduated with a degree in Contemporary Dance. At that time I also wanted to study Graphic Design but I didn't have the economic resources to do it because the career was very expensive. However, destiny led me to marry a graphic designer - typographer who has taught me many basic things throughout the time we have been together. In 2020 when the pandemic had us all locked up there was an opportunity to do a certification in UX/UI from Google so I took it and that's when I started to pay more attention to typography and that led me to design my first font with the help of my husband. That happened at the end of 2020 when he decided to leave the type foundry where he worked to to be a freelancer, so we formed our own foundry called fragTYPE where I have gradually been able to develop my design skills making fonts and today one of them is part of the F37x collection.
Inspiration
F37 Cinza
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.
Cinza is an original concept that came from the idea of making a font that was hidden behind a diagonal. During the development process I realised that the shape of some of the letters was lost and it was very difficult to distinguish them. Then it occurred to me to modify it with this variable font in which there was a change of weights but with a twist, the change is done in reverse defined by the axis of the diagonal, so that the font always had an intermediate point in which it could work as the common geometric one. As for the uses, the truth is that I always thought of it as a display font that could be used on record covers or titles, but during the process I discovered that it worked very well as a decorative font for signage.
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?
To be honest my references are very few but I like geometric fonts especially in their lighter weights, so that was my starting point. The typographic convention I broke with the Cinza design was the way the weight change works in the font as long as it didn't break the legibility which was what I was most interested in preserving. It's not a reading font, but I wanted it to be readable.
Now that your typeface has launched, what would be your dream project to use your F37® typeface on?
Definitely on a larger scale, as I answered earlier, I discovered that used as a decorative and expressive font for building signage it does look really really good. So I think my dream project could be something like that.
What have you learnt through developing and creating your own typeface(s) with our F37® type designers?
The biggest learning I had was that sometimes the original design may not work in the development stage and that it is important to be able to make the necessary changes or modifications to make the idea work without losing its essence or the original concept.
How would you describe your typeface in three words?
Transformable, adaptable, whimsical.
F37 Cinza Font Sampler
