LL Supremus is the graphic companion to the LL Supreme (2020) family. While LL Supremus matches Supreme’s metrics, its construction references a variety of geometrical, modular stencil typefaces from the 1920s. The most prominent of these – and still a popular display typeface today – is Paul Renner’s Futura Black (1926–29).

Curiously, only very little is known about Renner’s working process that led to Futura Black; not even Christopher Burke’s excellent book provides much insight. As an educated designer and teacher, he was certainly aware of Supremus (1915/16), a circle of artists around Kazimir Malevich, who gained a following as vanguard thinkers and who also had an influence on the Bauhaus emerging in Germany. Malevich himself drew some radically modular type for a film poster of Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse Der Spieler (1922), while Josef Albers created Schablonenschrift (1923–26) and Kombinationsschrift (1928) at the Bauhaus, two early experiments making use of modular geometric letterforms. Renner then tuned the pure geometry to more elaborate shapes for improved readability – as he had already done with Futura, released two years before Futura Black.

LL Supremus shares the high concern for functionality with Futura Black, but it investigates the very concept of the modular typeface from a different viewpoint. Abandoning Renner’s subtle optical adjustments, it infuses the shapes with strict geometrical contouring, taking them back to the basics.

Pablo Desportes spent much time researching different models from the era and exploring various options for how to elaborate them today. This led to two renderings of the same concept: LL Supremus-A is characterised by bold, fully geometric shapes, with a very narrow stencil bridge of 22 units. It is intended for large, confident use and strong impact. LL Supremus-B is adopting a more measured approach, using Renner’s curvature concept resulting in different proportions for individual letters, and with a wider stencil bridge of 44 units. It is made for regular headline use and works well right down to smaller sizes. These same principles were then applied to the Cyrillic and Greek glyph sets of LL Supremus, for which Pablo was advised by Viktoriya Grabowska and Irene Vlachou, respectively.

Both cuts include a large number of Schmuck elements, which Pablo Desportes adapted from a set of original Futura foundry type donated by Paul Renner to the printshop of Brussels’ La Cambre art school, where Pablo had studied graphic design. The Supremus Schmuck set is matched to some of the modular elements in the lettershapes, such as the quarter-circle line, allowing for seamless combination of letters and ornaments.

The idea to expand modularity beyond the individual lettershape is further expressed in the meticulous manual kerning, based on a system of multiples of 11 units. This ensures that even the most extreme geometric combinations display a perfect optical balance of all individual elements and separation lines.