The Mundo Sans™ typeface family is a design that’s going to stick around for a while. It was a while in the making too; designer Carl Crossgrove worked on and off for more than ten years to give this versatile family its subtle and distinctive luster.

Crossgrove’s work on Mundo Sans began in 1991, prompted by his admiration for several humanist sans typefaces: Metro®, Formata, Gill and Syntax®. As Crossgrove recalls, “I used these designs – and, surprisingly, Futura – as models for the proportion, weight, flow, spacing and rhythm of my design.” For the heavy weights in the family, Crossgrove drew inspiration from traditional hand-lettered signage, with its heavy sans caps, slightly flaring stems and humanist skeleton.

Crossgrove didn’t intend Mundo Sans to be revolutionary; rather, he sought to create “a design with subtle pen ductus, a wide range of weights, and a fluid, unobtrusive italic.” His aim was to keep the design clean and distinctive enough for display use while still being understated and suitably proportioned for text composition.

Mundo Sans’ italics are true cursive designs, with fluid strokes and obvious calligraphic overtones. The flick of the down-stroke in the ‘a,’ the descending stroke of the ‘f’ and baseline curve of the ‘z’ add grace to the design and distinguish it from traditional sloped-roman italics.

Crossgrove set lofty goals for this design, and it’s evident that he achieved them. With seven weights (ranging from the delicate Extra Light to the forthright Medium and the robust Ultra) and its complementary suite of cursive italics, there’s little outside the range of the Mundo Sans family.