These days, many of our current design trends revolve around the idea that “what’s old is new.” Retro-inspired typography has found a seemingly permanent place in contemporary design projects, perhaps due to the emotional connection it makes with the viewer. As much as we love the new and exciting, we equally love the old and familiar – we’re just creatures of habit that way.
Habib Otang is well versed in crafting type designs that feature a heavy vintage aesthetic. Releasing products through his personal foundry label, Alphabeta, Habib clearly shows a love of classic, vintage style typography. With a background in graphic design, branding, and typography, he focuses on designing modern scripts and display fonts that are steeped in a retro aesthetic that feels fresh yet timeless.
Habib’s cursive scripts, in particular, recall idyllic days long since passed, with just enough of a contemporary flair that turns his work into an instant classic. One of his more recent releases through YouWorkForThem is Neo Mayhem, a “modern retro” font duo that features a gorgeous cursive script paired with a bold, uppercase sans serif.
Neo Mayhem Regular features strong and fluid connective cursive lettering with a handwritten marker feel. This style of writing would be right at home on the window glass of a corner malt shop or on the signage for a local grocer. It’s also right at home in modern fashion spreads and advertising layouts, bringing a touch of the old to new merchandise and marketing campaigns. Neo Mayhem Regular is available with an Alt set of lettering, giving graphic designers more flexibility in their designs, enabling them to mix and match letters from each set to create interesting and unique letter combinations.
Neo Mayhem Oblique features bold, uppercase lettering with a slightly right-leaning stance. It’s a perfect accompaniment to Neo Mayhem Regular, yet it confidently stands well enough on its own. Neo Mayhem Oblique is a great option for any design project that needs a brawny all-caps letter set, including posters, flyers, logos, and apparel designs.
Both Neo Mayhem Regular and Oblique are well suited to a variety of projects like badges, logos, signage, displays, book covers, advertising, fashion spreads, product packaging, marketing materials, website designs, identity and branding projects.
Neo Mayhem Regular and Alt both include standard ligatures, and the entire family extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, and Pan African Latin languages for international design applications.
Habib Otang currently offers just four products through YouWorkForThem, each featuring a beautiful retro-inspired cursive script as a focal point. Visit his portfolio to check out the rest of his work and if you love script fonts with a vintage aesthetic, bookmark it so you won’t miss out on any of his future releases!
