Signal is an independent type foundry established by Max Phillips. Type design is but one of Max’s creative skills. He’s an accomplished novelist, a graphic designer, and he’s also had what we imagine to be one of the most enjoyable jobs in the world, working as a toy designer. Max served as a creative director for FAO Schwarz, a high-end toy company that has been in business for more than 150 years.
Certainly a creative force to be reckoned with, Max now owns and operates his own foundry. Established in 2012, Signal primarily focuses on custom lettering, type design, and branding. Its work has received an impressive amount of attention and recognition from reputable organizations and publishers that include Graphis, Communication Arts, the Type Directors Club of New York, and the International Society of Typographic Designers.
One of Signal’s most recent releases is Center Slab, a slab serif reminiscent of typewriter text. When Signal made the decision to add a slab serif to its well-known Center family of fonts, the resulting letterforms took on a rather analog appearance, parting ways from the digital presentation of its older relatives.
Center Slab’s architecture is fresh and contemporary, an updated exploration of monoline serif letterforms with a technological edge. It’s crisp and clear with excellent legibility, yet its rounded edges and angled arches help to soften any perceived abrasiveness. Depending on its application, Center Slab has the ability to morph into a font that’s friendly and warm, or one that’s more formal and authoritative. Its tone is completely dependent upon the designer’s whim.
Available in Thin, X Light, Light, Regular, Medium, Demi, Bold, Black, and Ultra, with corresponding italics for each, Center Slab is a brilliant choice for a variety of design projects. The range of weights makes it well suited to everything from headlines, body text, displays, signage, book covers, posters, presentations, logos, corporate correspondence, letterhead, product packaging, web design, and mobile apps. It’s particularly appropriate for any project centered around the themes of math, science, technology, and computers, especially programming.
Center Slab offers plenty of additional features, including case sensitive forms, fractions, discretionary ligatures, standard ligatures, historical ligatures, ordinals, tabular figures, subscript, superscript, scientific inferiors, and a number of stylistic alternates for exceptional design versatility. Its multilingual support extends to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, Dutch, and Basic Greek for global accessibility, covering more than 130 languages.
Signal currently offers four products through YouWorkForThem and we’re excited to see more of their work in the future. Visit their portfolio to view the rest of their products and bookmark it so you won’t miss any of their upcoming additions!
