João Miranda describes himself as a “Jack of all trades, master of some,” although judging by his work, he’s actually a master of many. Having worked in art direction, graphic design, illustration, and lettering, it’s little wonder why he is exceptionally skilled in branding. His multidisciplinary career has enjoyed a great deal of success and shows no sign of stopping.
João has always had an empathy for letters, beginning with his grandfather’s handwriting and later on, graffiti. “I always found that letters are such a brilliant way to communicate and to transmit your identity and your emotions,” João observed. He took his first steps into lettering through graffiti and when he learned the word, “typography,” at university, the rest became history.
For about a year, João designed wine labels exclusively and found that small caps with a big tracking were exceptionally beautiful. From that moment on, small caps became one of the qualities that makes a font truly awesome in his opinion. “They are such a lovely feature with such beautiful proportions that for so many times designers are unaware of this hidden gem,” he remarked.
One of his latest releases is BIG Stencil, a derivative of João’s 2015 release, BIG. “Since BIG came from a wooden type that Andrew Howard found in Porto,” João told us, “I found that a stencil version would be the right thing to do as an homage to such an inspiring city.”
BIG Stencil is an impactful condensed typeface with industrial nuances that lend a vintage flair to design projects. The tightness of the letterforms increases its legibility in smaller point, yet you can (and should!) make it larger to really get your message across. BIG Stencil is fantastic in large displays and signage, product labels, advertising, headlines, and posters.
João’s biggest challenge in creating BIG Stencil was the act of maintaining consistency. “I know that’s a must when you’re developing a font,” he began, “but when you develop a family of 20 cuts you have to make sure that all the invisible elements of the font are working properly. If you’re using BIG and BIG Stencil it is important that both share the same values.”
BIG Stencil is available in five weights with corresponding italics for each, with a host of OpenType features. BIG Stencil offers case sensitive forms, discretionary ligatures that include conjunction words, standard ligatures, fractions, and oldstyle figures for design flexibility. Multilingual support includes Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, and Dutch for fluid accessibility.
Through February 28, 2017, BIG Stencil is on sale for 30% off of its regular price.
João currently offers five products through YouWorkForThem. “Lately, I’ve been focusing my efforts in custom fonts,” João told us. “That said, I think the next commercial font I will do might be a script font. For the last couple years, I’ve been putting together some research so I can take a departure from a spencerian script to something really contemporary. What I have in mind might be hard to achieve (from a technical point of view) but nowadays you can do almost everything you can imagine with type.”
With that in mind, we recommend that you check out the rest of João’s portfolio and bookmark it so you won’t miss what are sure to be equally amazing and innovative future additions!
