In November 2008 Condé Nast contacted us to design a guest typeface for the first issue of Wired UK. Until that moment only the American edition was distributed in Britain, so our first meetings with the art director were mainly to understand the style of the previous issues and how they wanted the UK version to differ.



The American Wired often opts for typefaces with a square look. We decided to take this into account and looked for another shape that would become our module – something still playing between the square and the round, but different. That's how we arrived at the octagon for the character O. It was the first letter to be designed and set the tone for the rest of the alphabet.

Herman is both a display and a text typeface. It looks very different when it is printed in big or small sizes, once the arcs are made of lines designed to print as curves when reduced. While big sizes look square, small sizes print round. It also holds a very decent legibility when used in small sizes.

The typeface was named after Herman Snellen, inventor of the eye chart. Herman was showcased in the launch issue of Wired UK in January 2009, and was revised shortly afterwards.

It will be available soon through Die Gestalten.