Afrika

Aiming to reinvigorate its luxury products with the values of locality and craftsmanship, Misui is a Catalonian brand that focuses on high-quality jewelry and fashion accessories. For their new identity we designed a corporate typeface that is tailored to their rich history.

The virtue of craftmanship

Our corporate typeface forms the elemental trait that runs through the whole brand identity developed for Misui by the Barcelona-based art director Omar Sosa.

Misui was founded by the long-standing Catalonian jewelry-label union suiza, which builds on the heritage of Noucentisme – a Catalonian art movement of the early 20th Century. With a neoclassicist attitude, Noucentisme glorified order, clarity, and rationality. Standing against the decorative forms and bohemian styles of Art Nouveau, it sought to establish an almost Platonic idea of aesthetics.

The jewelry, shoes, and hats by Misui epitomize the brand’s high regard for local craftsmanship, giving value to the virtues of materials, excellent design, aesthetic purity, and bespoke production.

GEOMETRIC RATIONALITY AND TIMELESSNESS

With the same attention to handmade quality and finesse, we crafted a custom-made typeface for the brand. Standing proud like a the architecture of Noucentisme, the typeface’s construction and form language cherishes geometric rationality and clean lines.

We looked to the neoclassicist works by the Dutch architect and monk Hans van der Laan for inspiration. With their simple and geometric form language and perfectly balanced proportions, van der Laan’s buildings exemplify the timelessness we aimed for in our typedesign for Misui.

GIVING CHARACTER TO A TYPEFACE

The corporate typeface’s most distinguishing structural element is its inverted contrast. What is usually thin is wide, what is usually wide is thin. An effect that gives it a high recognizability. As a finishing touch, a small angular indentation is carved into the curves of the letters, lending the typeface a characterful elegance.