Munken
Genius Loci Revisited

Our track record for original typefaces led JUNO to commission a new corporate font for Arctic Paper’s Munken brand, based on the historical letterforms on Swedish road signs. Type designers Laurenz Brunner and Selina Bernet developed a family of three weights for wide use, which generated more than 15.000 free downloads. We added an in-depth research publication exploring the unmapped territory and genealogy of Swedish road signs with designers Jonas Williamsson and Rikard Heberling.

Com­mu­nic­at­ing her­it­age – The char­ac­ter shapes pay homage to the old tem­plates for type on Swedish road signs, while also look­ing fresh and appeal­ing to a con­tem­por­ary audience.

Wide applic­ab­il­ity – Trans­form­ing the single-weight dis­play typeface into a three-weights family for title and body text set­ting was part of the chal­lenge in the design process.

Research con­tri­bu­tion – Expand­ing the col­lab­or­at­ive pro­ject, an in-depth his­tor­ical study rely­ing on a trove of hitherto unpub­lished sources invest­ig­ated the making of the early ver­sions of the typeface at the Swedish depart­ment for road traffic.

Ser­vice to the com­munity – The cor­por­ate typeface car­ries Munken’s inter­ac­tion with the design com­munity, via the Munken CoLab, and it was dis­trib­uted for free during an ini­tial three-month period.