Portuguese art director, graphic designer and illustrator Joo Oliveira counts everyone from Adidas and Nike to Diesel and Hugo Boss as clients. When he let us know he was releasing a brand new typeface, we thought we'd catch up with him to find out more...
Computer Arts (CA): What was the inspiration behind the typeface?
Joo Oliveira (JO): "Typography masters such as Bodoni and Didot and elegant personality of calligraphy typefaces, especially their extravagant and endless swashes."
CA: How would you describe the typeface?
JO: "Port is an experimental Didone display typeface with a modern twist: a mixture of distinct typographic flavours combined in unexpected and surprising ways, melting the straight lines and strong contrasts of Didone typefaces with the elegant lines of calligraphy in a geometric way, and resulting in exuberant characters with geometric swashes that can be combined in countless ways."
CA: What, if any, problems did you encounter creating the typeface?
JO: "Being in development for over a year, I faced several problems: maintaining a visual coherency throughout hundreds of characters was the first problem I encountered. So I had to create and follow rules I could apply throughout the whole development process. Having so many alternate characters was another. Kerning was also difficult."
CA: Where and how do expect to see it used?
JO: "Being a designer who loves typography and editorial design, my objective with Port was to create a display typeface to be used on editorial projects like magazine spreads. It's probably aimed at fashion magazines – sometimes it can be funky, sometimes it can be glamurous, but I would love to be surprised and see it being used on unexpected ways."
See more of Joo Oliveira's work at onrepeat.net and on his Facebook page.
