Sinaloa

Rosmarie Tissi named her experimental alphabets from 1972, Sinaloa and Sonora, after Mexican states which she visited on her extensive travels. Without bearing any cultural references to Mexico, the lettershapes mark decisive escapes from the Swiss Style dogmas of the time, epitomised by another typeface named after a place: Helvetica. The alphabets are highly systematic; and with a lack of closed counters that is reminiscent of stencil, the letters are shimmering into focus through Tissi’s use of parallel lines.

Sinaloa was first published for Letraset’s dry-transfer Letragraphica collection, in 1974. It enjoyed wide success and soon travelled around the world, becoming a staple in countless lettering adaptations, from T-shirts in Vanuatu to a British video game console, from the cult logotype of Citroën’s ill-fated BX 4TC model to Frank Zappa’s letterhead. It was particularly successful in the realm of music, decorating album sleeves of established musicians, obscure groups, one-hit wonders, and popular song compilations alike for the last 50 years.

After Letraset digitised its library with URW, and later with the International Typeface Corporation (ITC), Sinaloa found further dissemination as a digital font in the 1990s, albeit entirely without Tissi’s involvement or agreement. Multiple unauthorised versions were mushrooming, including one with a lower-case alphabet, until Tissi reclaimed her rights from Letraset’s successor, Monotype, and terminated its distribution in 2020.

Three years later, she initiated a collaboration with Lineto for a new digital version of both Sinaloa and Sonora, based on her original drawings from 1972. Type designer Céline Odermatt – no relation to Tissi’s studio partner Siegfried Odermatt – worked closely with Tissi to expand the original alphabet from around fifty characters to over two hundred. Tissi and Odermatt also remodelled the diacritics and punctuation initially produced by Letraset, and applied subtle optical adjustments to the stripes.

LL Sinaloa and LL Sonora are available in a Limited Edition of dry-transfer lettering sheets for each typeface, with a download code for the new, fully authorised digital fonts.

(*1937) became an apprentice and later an employee and a full business partner at the Zurich-based studio of Siegfried Odermatt, eventually named Odermatt & Tissi following 1968. Her posters and corporate design work found early recognition in leading Swiss graphic design journals Neue Grafik (1958 and 1959) and Typografische Monatsblätter (1962 and 1965). Developing an alternate visual language to the Swiss Style, Odermatt & Tissi soon evolved toward the position of ‘inspired outsiders’ within the Zurich design scene. Typographische Monatsblätter dedicated a special issue to their work in 1978, and Wolfgang Weingart wrote a long studio profile for Graphis, in 1986, while Tissi’s posters found international recognition, appearing in many group and solo shows. She has drawn more than 20 display typefaces to date – each named after a destination of her extensive travels. In 2018, she was awarded the Grand Prix Design, Switzerland’s highest accolade in the field, issued by the government.

Céline Odermatt

(*1989) holds a BA in Graphic Design from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU, 2013), and an MA in Type Design from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK, 2019). Céline teaches type design-related courses at HSLU in Luzern and beyond. Based in Zurich, she counts Weltkunst and other magazines from Die Zeit-Verlag among her clients. Since 2020, Céline has been a library manager at Lineto with a strong focus on design. She coordinates and refines the production of typefaces in close exchange with external and internal designers as well as with the font mastering specialists at Alphabet, Berlin. As a type designer, Céline worked on the redesign of the experimental typeface LL Tabletten (2021, with Anatole Couteau and Weichi He).

Designed by Rosmarie Tissi and Céline Odermatt in 2024, based on Rosmarie Tissi’s original drawings from 1972. Released by Lineto in 2024. Font engineering and mastering by Alphabet, Berlin.