Mark Van Bronkhorst says he had parking lot signs in mind when he designed ITC Conduit. “It’s the kind of lettering you might find on boilers, assembly diagrams, and desiccant packets,“ he explains. “It’s plain, grid-based, visually incompetent, yet legible and direct.“
The design was “a cut-and-paste job” constructed from a set of character parts, according to van Bronkhorst. As he developed the face, the 90 degree turns on the shapes reminded him of electrical conduits; hence the name.
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“I deliberately broke every optical rule in making the italics and weights,” says van Bronkhorst. “The italic is merely a skewed version of the roman, with no visual adjustment. I did, however, create substitutions for the letters a, f, g, and E to give an ironic ‘italic’ feel to an otherwise obliqued face. The weights are a form of computer-generated swelling – think edema.”
After ITC Conduit’s release in 1997, Fast Company magazine asked van Bronkhorst to develop additional, custom weights. With the launch of Extra Light, Regular, Extra Bold, and Black weights, plus new small caps and old style figures for all weights, ITC Conduit went from six fonts to 35 designs.
Taking the face to such extremes – particularly the Black weight – was both scary and fun for van Bronkhorst and Alan Greene, who also worked on the project. “Given the concept that ITC Conduit is stiff and naïve, we felt we could get away with murder on the shapes,” says van Bronkhorst. “Our friend Erik Spiekermann describes the Black as ‘wonderfully stupid.’ We quite agree.”
Mark Van Bronkhorst has enjoyed lettering since childhood. He is principal of MvB Design in Albany, California, where he provides a wide range of graphic design services.