Kapitol Specimen Book – LIMITED EDITION
Formist Foundry Typeface Companion 01

Please go here to purchase the Kapitol LIMITED EDITION Box Set

A collector’s item for type lovers limited to an edition of 50 copies.

To celebrate the release of Formist Foundry’s new type family Kapitol, we are thrilled to offer this special Kapitol Typeface Companion specimen book.

Kapitol is a sans-serif type family that expands on the distinctive materiality found in 1980s screen aesthetics, grounded by a robust practicality, clean utility and concrete geometry. The Kapitol fonts are available from the Formist Foundry.

Designed by Mark Gowing, the Kapitol Typeface Companion is a visually expressive collector’s item created to playfully link the conceptual elements that underpin the design and creation of the Kapitol type family.

At 160 pages, the Kapitol Typeface Companion specimen book features an essay about the creation of Kapitol; detailed specimen typesettings; expressive typographic experiments and tributes; large Kapitol glyphs; and a collection of black and white photographs by Gowing, featuring Brutalist concrete architecture in Australia’s capital city, Canberra. 

The book also comes with two free Kapitol posters at 50 × 70 cm each. One is a Kapitol specimen featuring city names of the world, and the other is a photographic poster featuring a Kapitol letter k.

Formist director and Kapitol designer Mark Gowing describes the type family as “inspired by screen aesthetics that were part of the digital design revolution that gave birth to a vibrant, frantic era of groundbreaking creativity in the late 1980s. I am a product of those tumultuous times and my attitude towards communications is made up of both traditional and progressive values as a result.”

“There was change in the air and luminaries such as Neville Brody, Gert Dumbar, Emigre, April Greiman and Wolfgang Weingart emerged as champions of progress. Frank and awkward characteristics became ever present in new typefaces and a fresh approach to communication design questioned the status quo.”

Gowing continues, “Kapitol expands on the memory of the single-weight Chicago, by capturing its tone and energy, while also completely re-inventing it. To create a sensitive and useful type family, with a formality based on familiar robustness and sense of geometry. Kapitol has been created with a concrete nature at its heart. During the design process I also looked at concrete architecture (both conceptual and literal) for the inspiration required to use geometry as the necessary central focus of Kapitol’s visual language.”

The Kapitol fonts are available from the Formist Foundry.

Please go here to purchase the Kapitol LIMITED EDITION Box Set.

Paperback
160 pages
210 × 297 mm 
Design: Mark Gowing
Text: Mark Gowing
2022 FE031B

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