When I thought about adapting Futura, I hesitated at first. The initial idea was to create a geometric typeface with a slanted angle of stress. After a long period of testing and redrawing, my opinion about the solution stabilised and I realised it would be best if I remove Futura’s certain level of archaism. I added a more commercial flair and enlivened it with alternate characters. I shortened the ascenders to reduce the difference between the ascender height and the cap line. Upper-case letters were shortened, which is aesthetically more impressive. I also harmonised all of the styles of the typeface, focused on shaping the rounded strokes of individual letterforms, and tried to provide them with a somewhat more humanist expression – removing the geometric strictness in some characters. I made the diagonal terminals flatter, but maintained the connection to Renner’s original Futura.

Work on the script was added in the second semester. Here the inspiration was somewhat looser; it was enough to instead pick up the threads of the principles I used working on the basic style. In the original script version by Edwin W. Shaar, letter strokes were illogical and contained a good deal of “non-Futura-ness”. Especially in the upper-case, the Integra writing style has a slightly provocative expression and is an excellent complement to the basic version. To help fall asleep at night, perhaps it would be easier to count kerning pairs. I think I deviated from the master template in terms of how the typeface is drawn, but the expression of the typeface has been preserved. I added a bit of my own spice, crowning it by smoke-curing it with a script version. Why Integra? From the Latin word integrare – to integrate, incorporate. The flavour is incorporated, somewhere at the end of the list of ingredients, but it certainly is not on the front of the “packaging”.