ITC Atelier Sans
Nick Curtis refers to himself as a typographic archaeologist. “I like to dig up, reconstruct and breathe new life into typefaces from the past,” he says. Luckily, Curtis lives near Washington, D.C., with its many Smithsonian museums and the Library of Congress. “Every six weeks or so, I plunge into the archives for a day, and come back with enough reference material, inspiration and ideas to occupy me until my next visit,” he says.
Atelier Sans began as one of Curtis’s renovations. His goal was to create a monoline design with Art Deco “sensibilities,” but without the geometric precision and relatively small x-height of faces like Futura or Kabel. However, the project proved to be more difficult than Curtis anticipated. He redrew the entire character set several times before arriving at the present design.
The result? Gentle curves and suggestions of serifs create a crisp, clean and open face that is at once sleek, sensuous and still affable. Available as a two-weight family with complementary italics, ITC Atelier Sans is another successful and usable revival from Nick Curtis.