Occupant

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Dispatches from the 20th century

Cyrus Highsmith • design • April 28, 2023

05.12.23

Occupy ATypI!

News

Dispatch & Stainless 2

Occupant Fonts • design • April 26, 2023

04.07.23

Marie Otsuka on Real Time Variable Fonts

News

Monospace in Motion

Marie Otsuka • design • November 15, 2021

03.20.23

Cyrus Highsmith at Elisava

News

The Origins of Occupant Oldstyle

Occupant Fonts • design • August 26, 2021

10.27.22

RISO Workshop with Marie Otsuka

News

Scotchadelics

Cem Eskinazi • design • May 10, 2021

07.11.22

Marie Otsuka on Responsive Typography at Type@Cooper

News

Collect Them All

Cyrus Highsmith • publication • March 10, 2021

07.05.22

Marie Otsuka to co-teach “Building Brands with Type” this summer

News

How to Speak Dog

Occupant Fonts • publication • September 14, 2020

06.27.22

Take a drawing workshop in Barcelona with Cyrus Highsmith

News

Rapport Riso Print

Occupant Fonts • in-use • August 12, 2020

05.09.22

Marie Otsuka makes a virtual appearance at TypeMedia

News

Building Rapport

June Shin • design • August 03, 2020

04.26.22

Marie Otsuka presents at SVA

News

A MAGMATIC NEW TYPEFACE

Occupant Fonts • design • January 27, 2020

01.01.22

A New Occupant!

News

EDIT MODE

Marie Otsuka • editorial • December 30, 2019

10.26.21

Read about Occupant Oldstyle on AIGA Eye on Design Magazine

News

Dragon Head, Snake Tail

June Shin • editorial • December 18, 2019

07.20.21

Read Cem Eskinazi’s interview on AIGA Eye on Design Magazine

News

What We Talk About When We Talk About Work

Cyrus Highsmith • editorial • November 01, 2019

06.18.21

Marie Otsuka and Nic Schumann present the variable font substitution mapper

News

Notes on Quiosco Display

Cem Eskinazi • design • October 30, 2019

06.16.21

Cyrus Highsmith interviews Cem Eskinazi about Mantar

News

Design Art Typography

Elizabeth Leeper • in-use • July 23, 2019

03.30.21

Cem Eskinazi presents at Boston University College of Fine Arts

News

Scout Travels to Spain

Occupant Fonts • in-use • May 08, 2019

03.01.21

Cyrus Highsmith presents at Type@Cooper

News

Good Morning!

Elizabeth Leeper • publication • April 01, 2019

02.12.21

Cem Eskinazi visits Parsons The New School

News

Transformations

Cyrus Highsmith • design • July 30, 2018

12.15.20

June Shin goes on Instagram LIVE with Dos Uno Studio

News

A Daily Sketchbook

Cyrus Highsmith • editorial • April 23, 2018

12.08.20

Cyrus Highsmith gives a talk at Letterform Archive

News

Here’s to the Future!

Cyrus Highsmith • editorial • March 01, 2018

12.06.20

June Shin presents at Society of Scribes Holiday Fair

News

Onions, Leeks, and Garlic

Cyrus Highsmith • design • April 17, 2017

12.05.20

Cyrus Highsmith to give a workshop at Type West

News

Scout Expands into New Territory

Occupant Fonts • design • June 24, 2016

12.01.20

Cyrus Highsmith Discusses Inside Paragraphs

News

Every Typeface Needs a Story to Tell

Cyrus Highsmith • editorial • June 09, 2016

11.24.20

Marie Otsuka presents at Maryland Institute College of Art

News

A Leak-Proof Sans Serif

Occupant Fonts • design • June 08, 2016

11.19.20

June Shin participates in a panel discussion about what’s next in type

News

Ari Inu Usagi

Occupant Fonts • publication • May 20, 2016

11.06.20

Occupant Fonts presents at TMX Conference

News

Reflections on Inside Paragraphs

Cyrus Highsmith • editorial • April 27, 2016

09.28.20

Marie Otsuka hosts a workshop at Ethics By Design

News

Cyrus Highsmith Wins the Gerrit Noordzij Prize

Occupant Fonts • announcement • February 05, 2015

07.24.20

Cyrus Highsmith and June Shin hang out at Typographics

News

Le Jet Aims High with New Campaign

Occupant Fonts • in-use • December 18, 2012

06.19.20

Nic Schumann, Cem Eskinazi, and Marie Otsuka discuss a new kerning tool at Typographics

News

A New Typography Primer

Occupant Fonts • publication • August 31, 2012

02.28.20

Occupant Fonts gives a talk at Katherine Small Gallery

News

News

05.12.23

Occupy ATypI!

04.07.23

Marie Otsuka on Real Time Variable Fonts

03.20.23

Cyrus Highsmith at Elisava

10.27.22

RISO Workshop with Marie Otsuka

07.11.22

Marie Otsuka on Responsive Typography at Type@Cooper

More News

Fonts

Allium

Cyrus Highsmith’s Allium series is a humanist sans serif with a pan-European character set. It’s a calm, maybe even quiet design, drawn for headlines and deck sizes. Highsmith named it after a genus of flowering plants that includes onions, leeks, and garlic.

Allium

Allium Rounded Allium Text

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Allium Rounded

Marie Otsuka grew Allium Rounded from Cyrus Highsmith’s humanist sans serif series, Allium. In addition to rounding the stroke endings, Otsuka cultivated the original proportions to suit the new design. It’s a nutritious design that works best at headline and desk sizes.

Allium Rounded

Allium Text Allium

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Allium Text

Cyrus Highsmith culled his Allium family down to size, engineering a text version that shines in the 8 to 24-point range. In addition to adjusting the proportions and spacing, Highsmith accentuated the contrast between inside and outside of letters to increase their broadcast range. June Shin and Cem Eskinazi assisted.

Allium Text

Allium Rounded Allium

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Amira

The cross between calligraphy and sans serif is rare, inhabiting territory between Hermann Zapf’s Optima, classical sans structure with a calligraphic spirit, and Warren Chappell’s Lydian, classical calligraphy without serifs. Cyrus Highsmith claims adventurous new ground with Amira, a letterform that pops from the page with an angled vitality. Amira both welcomes and surprises readers with bright new rhythms and texture.

Amira

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Antenna

Cyrus Highsmith’s Antenna is a versatile industrial sans serif that projects confidence and deliberation. He slowed down his usual fast curves and shifted the emphasis to pattern of white shapes formed inside and between characters. With seven weights in four widths and matching italics, Antenna is ready for almost anything.

Antenna

Antenna Serif

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Antenna Serif

Antenna Serif is the slab counterpart to Cyrus Highsmith’s Antenna. Developed with David Jonathan Ross, it weighs in at 56 styles—seven weights in four widths, each with italics. Antenna Serif plays well in print and digital formats.

Antenna Serif

Antenna

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Biscotti

Biscotti is Cyrus Highsmith’s response to the prompt, “I want a typeface that makes me feel pretty.” It was drawn in 2004 for Brides magazine to set headlines and pull quotes. Biscotti is a simplified 21st century take on the traditional English roundhand calligraphy.

Biscotti

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Daleys Gothic

Cyrus Highsmith began work on Daley’s Gothic in 1997, experimenting with a steel brush and ink on paper. He went on to draw many variations, and in 1998 finally settled on three weights with matching italics, designed for compact headlines. He named the family after his mother, who taught him how to draw.

Daleys Gothic

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Dispatch 2

Cyrus Highsmith created Dispatch in his search for an industrial-grade slab serif to serve as text and display. It’s a taut amalgam of letterforms found in typescript, on engineering blueprints, and shipping labels. Use it for heavy commercial lifting. Cem Eskinazi assisted with its re-release as Dispatch 2.

Dispatch 2

Dispatch Mono

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Dispatch Mono

Dispatch Mono is a monospaced version of Cyrus Highsmith’s industrial strength slab serif, Dispatch. He originally made it for his own personal use on shipping labels and printing out PostScript code. Now it’s available to everyone in regular and bold weights with corresponding italics.

Dispatch Mono

Dispatch 2

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Eggwhite

Trapped in a seemingly endless meeting, Cyrus Highsmith sought refuge in his ever-present sketchbook. As he attempted to doodle his way to freedom, the idea for Eggwhite began to emerge. It’s an experiment in unconventional weight distribution that comes in a pair of playful weights.

Eggwhite

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Gasket

Cyrus Highsmith began Gasket as a single font to accompany his illustrations in a children’s book. The amiable series moves with a gentle hop thanks to the slight slant and subtly staggered endings. He added weights, italics, and small caps for Gasket’s release into the world.

Gasket

Gasket Uncial Gasket Unicase

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Gasket Uncial

The most famous example of uncial lettering is found in The Book of Kells, circa 800 CE. However, the uncial script dates all the way back to the fourth century. Cyrus Highsmith updates this ancient calligraphy in Gasket Uncial. He hopes his Irish ancestors would be proud.

Gasket Uncial

Gasket Unicase Gasket

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Gasket Unicase

For the busy typographer who cannot be bothered to decide which case to use, Cyrus Highsmith drew Gasket Unicase. It features extralarge lowercase forms designed to fit with the capitals. Gasket Unicase contains no ascenders or descenders.

Gasket Unicase

Gasket Uncial Gasket

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Heron Sans

Steadfast and no-nonsense, Heron Sans is always ready to go to work. Cyrus Highsmith galvanized its mechanically inspired letters with warmth and energy. It’s a versatile family, capable of doing the job in both headlines and text.

Heron Sans

Heron Serif

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Heron Serif

Heron Serif is the slab serif counterpart to Cyrus Highsmith’s Heron Sans. It’s a versatile design, capable of doing the job in both headlines and text. Cem Eskinazi added Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.

Heron Serif

Heron Sans

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Ibis Display

Cyrus Highsmith found inspiration for his Ibis series by combining unlikely sources, Justus Erisch Walbaum’s 1919 Walbaum and Hermann Zapf’s 1952 Melior. For the display version, he thinned the serifs and compacted the fitting. It comes in a robust range of weights and widths with corresponding italics.

Ibis Display

Ibis Text

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Ibis Text

Cyrus Highsmith found inspiration for his Ibis series by combining unlikely sources, Justus Erisch Walbaum’s 1919 Walbaum and Hermann Zapf’s 1952 Melior. He drew Ibis Text for use in his own typography textbook, Inside Paragraphs. It comes in a robust range of weights, small caps, and corresponding italics.

Ibis Text

Ibis Display

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Icebox

Way back in 1997, Cyrus Highsmith bought a box of magentic letters from a variety store. Many years later, the colorful plastic shapes inspired him to make Icebox. It’s a modular sans serif for headlines and short blurbs of text available in three weights plus a bonus Magnet style. It requires no refrigeration.

Icebox

Icebox Magnet

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Icebox Magnet

Way back in 1997, Cyrus Highsmith bought a box of magentic letters from a variety store. The colorful plastic shapes inspired him to make Icebox many years later. It’s a modular sans serif for headlines and short blurbs of text available in three weights plus a bonus Magnet style. It requires no refrigeration.

Icebox Magnet

Icebox

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Loupot

In 1938, French designer Charles Loupot drew a groundbreaking logotype to promote St. Raphaël aperitif wine. Half a century later, the logo inspired New York designer and illustrator Laurie Rosenwald to work with Cyrus Highsmith on expanding it into a typeface. At once industrial and calligraphic, Loupot is one of the few scripts that offers a successful all-caps setting.

Loupot

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Magmatic

Magmatic is a massive sans serif series from Cyrus Highsmith and June Shin. Its nuts-and-bolts character remains steady through an extensive range of widths and weights. The design was loosely inspired by Japanese Showa-era typefaces found on shipping labels, machinery, and buildings.

Magmatic

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Mantar

Mantar is a psychedelic Scotch Roman designed by Cem Eskinazi. After stumbling upon a phototypesetting specimen, Cem was inspired by the warmth of the letters. Mantar is a soft display face with curvy and elongated endings. It comes in 12 styles including a funky Ultra weight.

Mantar

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Occupant Gothic

Occupant Gothic typograhically embodies Cyrus Highsmith’s caffeinated sketching style circa 1998. It’s a frantic angular design with no clear function in two weights plus italics. The name predates the founding of Occupant Fonts and sounds beautiful in Highsmith’s Wisconsin accent.

Occupant Gothic

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Occupant Oldstyle

Occupant Oldstyle is a 21st century text face from Cyrus Highsmith, assisted by June Shin. The rounded triangular endings are the result of a long fermentation process that combines ingredients from Japanese Mincho style typefaces, rounded sans serifs, electronic music, and toys. Highsmith calls them ‘child-safe serifs’.

Occupant Oldstyle

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Pentameter

In Pentameter, Marie Otsuka explores the polyrhythmic potential that usually stays dormant inside the limitations of monospaced typefaces. As an “upright italic,” the letterforms create a lively pattern while their uniform metrics remain steady. The result is an inventive design on a syncopated beat that resonates with the poetics beyond code.

Pentameter

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Prensa

Spanish for press, Prensa is a dynamic series for text from Cyrus Highsmith. He arrived at this family’s character through his process of “wrapping outside curves around the inside, deliberately creating tension between the two,” a technique epitomized in Electra, a 1935 bookface by 20th-century master W.A. Dwiggins. This tension really appears in the italics, which stray from the traditional forms to balance simplicity with vitality.

Prensa

Prensa Display

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Prensa Display

Cyrus Highsmith designed Prensa Display to accompany his popular textface, Prensa. The display cut shares Prensa’s distinctive tension within the letterforms but has sharper features and a more compact fit. It also includes additional narrow widths for really packing in powerful headlines.

Prensa Display

Prensa

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Quiosco

“Kiosk” in Spanish is Quiosco, also the name of a text family designed by Cyrus Highsmith. It’s part of his exploration of the work of W.A. Dwiggins and the contrast between the inside and outside of letter­forms. Quiosco brings a lively texture to narrow columns of text and permits compact wordspaces with no loss of readability.

Quiosco

Quiosco Display

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Quiosco Display

Cem Eskinazi took Quiosco and sharpened it for headlines. As he redrew Highsmith’s textface, Eskinazi imagined transforming it from something made of clay into something chiseled in stone. In addition, he also extended the weight range and drew a special set of figures to go with the small caps.

Quiosco Display

Quiosco

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Rapport

Rapport is a grotesque sans serif that exudes warmth. It was born on the walls of RISD Museum when June Shin designed the exhibition Altered States in 2017. She took inspiration from one of the artworks on display, the frontispiece of the 1862 publication of Charles François Daubigny’s etchings. Rapport’s whimsical features and general wideness contribute to the design’s quirky, friendly character.

Rapport

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Relay

Relay is as close as Cyrus Highsmith has gotten to drawing a geometric sans serif. It zigs and zags between European art deco, American sign lettering, and modernist geometry. It comes in five weights and three widths with matching italics for setting headlines and text of all kinds.

Relay

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Salvo Sans

Cyrus Highsmith created the extensive Salvo series to help unify three different magazines under one typographic umbrella. Salvo Sans is an energetic, optimistic design in five weights and three widths with corresponding italics. It works for headlines, pull quotes, as well as short text.

Salvo Sans

Salvo Serif

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Salvo Serif

Cyrus Highsmith created the extensive Salvo series to help unify three different magazines under one typographic umbrella. Salvo Serif is an outspoken slab design in five weights and three widths with corresponding italics. The heavy serifs help to form unified words that catch the reader’s eye and draw them into the text.

Salvo Serif

Salvo Sans

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Scout

Cyrus Highsmith drew Scout to meet the evergreen request for an industrial sans serif that resembles DIN 1451 but not too much. He mixed in ingredients from Venus, Cairoli, as well as his own graphic sensibilities. It comes in a robust range of weights and two widths plus italics for headlines, captions, and sidebars. June Shin added Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.

Scout

Scout Text

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Scout Text

Scout Text was drawn to accompany Cyrus Highsmith’s popular utilitarian sans serif Scout. He optimized it for small sizes by increasing the x-height, opening the spacing, and adding tails to the lowercase ‘l’ and ‘a’ for better legibility. It comes in 4 weights plus italics.

Scout Text

Scout

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Serge

Cyrus Highsmith is known for his all-round workhorse families like Antenna, Scout, and Salvo. In Serge, he lets loose the reins and raises a show pony. It’s an acrobatic design for decorative blurbs, signs, and headlines. The family has three weights, from Regular to Black, but all are equally light on their feet. A set of swash caps adds a subtle flair.

Serge

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Stainless 2

Stainless was originally derived from Cyrus Highsmith’s slab serif, Dispatch. It began as a simple experiment but evolved into its own series. It’s been used in headlines and pull quotes in publications around the world from Señor Fútbol to the Wall Street Journal. Cem Eskinazi assisted with its re-release as Stainless 2.

Stainless 2

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Tick

Tick and Tock reflect Cyrus Highsmith’s long love affair with stencils as well as modular alphabets. Tick came from cutting paper and includes a randomizing feature that gives words a natural handmade appearance. It comes in only one weight but it gets the job done when you need a word or two to attract the reader’s attention.

Tick

Tock

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Tock

Tick and Tock reflect Cyrus Highsmith’s long love affair with stencils as well as modular alphabets. Tock is the mechanized version of the kit of parts established in Tick. It would be at home on a Bauhaus poster or on the side of a bulldozer. Like Tick, it comes in just one mighty weight.

Tock

Tick

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Zócalo Banner

Cyrus Highsmith’s Zócalo series was part of Eduardo Danilo’s 2002 redesign of the leading Mexico City newspaper, El Universal. It was inspired by Nicholas Kis’s oldstyle as well as Highsmith’s impressions of México itself. Zócalo Banner is a stylistic variation of Zócalo Display with simplified serifs for headlines and decks.

Zócalo Banner

Zócalo Display Zócalo Text

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Zócalo Display

Cyrus Highsmith’s Zócalo series was part of Eduardo Danilo’s 2002 redesign of the leading Mexico City newspaper, El Universal. It was inspired by Nicholas Kis’s oldstyle as well as Highsmith’s impressions of México itself. Zócalo Display is a sparkling, compact design for headlines and decks.

Zócalo Display

Zócalo Banner Zócalo Text

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Zócalo Text

Cyrus Highsmith’s Zócalo series was part of Eduardo Danilo’s 2002 redesign of the leading Mexico City newspaper, El Universal. It was inspired by Nicholas Kis’s oldstyle as well as Highsmith’s impressions of México itself. Zócalo Text derives its sturdy proportions from Chauncey Griffith’s classic newsface, Ionic No.5.

Zócalo Text

Zócalo Banner Zócalo Display

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