Elegantly balancing playfulness and functionality, Macan draws influence from last century’s Grotesque genre, the industrial aesthetics of stencil typefaces, and the mesmerizing qualities of rave flyers from the ’90s—and (re)mixes them into a versatile Neo-Grotesque type family.
In addition to Macan’s solid version, which samples 20th-century Grotesques (Gothic No. 124, Times Gothic, Modern Gothic), its Stencil companion is a mash-up of functionality and ornament. Similarly to Milton Glaser’s “Glaser Stencil”, which partially translates the functional aspects of stencils—the connectors (“bridges”) that prevent counters from being removed from the final motif—into aesthetic features, Macan’s stencil version challenges their purpose and treats them more like an element of adornment. Its bridges—inspired by the whimsical type (Keedy Sans) spotted on promotional flyers of Wicked Sound System, an Acid House-loving crew organizing “wild and lawless full moon parties” in San Francisco in the early ’90s—are both rounded and straight, both functional and ornamental, both severe and quirky. Macan and Macan Stencil were developed in harmony, influencing each other’s character shapes, rhythm, and proportions while remaining identical in their characters’ widths, allowing them to work together flawlessly.
Fully equipped with numerous stylistic and contextual alternates, figure sets, case-sensitive forms, and an extensive collection of uppercase and lowercase ligatures, Macan’s nine weights with corresponding italics in two sub-families are fluent in most Latin languages (including Vietnamese) as well as Cyrillic and Greek, and ready to hit the turntables of your next project.