Josse Pickard is a typographer and type designer working across print and digital. After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2013, he started his career at a co-edition publishers as a book designer, eventually moving into a freelance role.
He found he was frequently creating custom type, leading him to undertake a Master's in Type Design at the University of Reading in 2022. His work has a strong craft seam running through it, aiming to combine his intrigue of modern technology with a love of tactility and physical processes.
Article continues belowBrickfields
"This is a project currently in development with the working title Brickfields," says Josse. "It’s based on some brick lettering on a building in central London. I was intrigued by how the constraints of the material, the rectangular module of the brick with offset mortar joints, shaped the design of the characters, similar to a pixel font.
"The typeface currently exists in two styles: a sans and a serif, each with regular and bold weights," Josse explains. "The regular sans stays closest to the logic of the original brickwork, preserving the blocky rhythm and modular structure of the letters.
"The serif is a more eccentric interpretation that pushes the system further, exploring how far the forms can be stretched while still respecting the underlying brick grid.
"Italics for both are currently underway. Once completed, the family will be refined and made available somewhere in the near future."
Mamut
"Mamut was designed during my Type Design MA at the University of Reading," says Josse. "The brief questioned how a typeface could function effectively across a wide range of optical sizes in varying print conditions.
"The design was engineered from the text weight, with large internal counters and distinctive serifs that subtly distort and warp to maintain legibility as the type becomes smaller. These features help the forms remain open and readable even in challenging print conditions, allowing the typeface to function at sizes as small as 3pt.
"The family supports both Latin and Arabic scripts and includes all the typographic tools necessary for complex typesetting. Developing the two scripts alongside each other was an important part of the project, ensuring they work cohesively while respecting the conventions and calligraphic logic of each writing system."
PCB
PCB began with research into ornamental drop caps and an exploration of what a modernised drop cap might look like. "Traditional floriated initials are often surrounded by elaborate decorative forms, and I was interested in finding a contemporary visual language that could play a similar role," says Josse.
"The dense, intricate patterns of printed circuit boards provided the inspiration. The organised chaos of a PCB, its traces (the copper pathways that connect components on a circuit board) and components, felt reminiscent of the ornamental flourishes that envelop letters in historical illuminated manuscripts.
"The ornamental capitals required a typeface to sit alongside them, which led to the development of the PCB family itself," explains Josse.
"The letterforms are constructed from straight lines and 45-degree angles, softened only by very subtle curved corners. The weights are determined by increasing numbers of traces and the family also includes an inline style that highlights the labyrinthine patterns common to PCB layouts."
Millstone
"Millstone is based on a weathered piece of stone carving commemorating the widening of a bridge near where I live in North Devon," says Josse. "The original inscription has been gradually worn down by time and weather, and I was interested in capturing that sense of erosion and physical carving in a digital typeface.
"The design is a loose reinterpretation of the letterforms found on the stone, combined with influences from late nineteenth-century grotesques. While experimenting with ways to replicate the carved effect, I developed the hatched shadow detail, which mimics the steady chips taken by a chisel cutting into stone.
"Because the shadow is built from individual strokes, it could be controlled through a variable font axis, allowing the apparent direction of light to move around the letterforms (above).
"Additional styles allow designers to layer the type to create richer dimensional effects (below)."
möbius
This is a playful type bringing new meaning to the word monolinear, with each character formed from a single line. "Currently the name is möbius in reference to the möbius strip, a three dimensional one sided shape," notes Josse.
"The perceived weight of the typeface comes from the thickness of the stroke itself rather than the width of the stems, creating a different relationship between structure and weight than in most traditional type designs.
"At the moment the typeface contains a basic Latin character set and a colour variation, though italics and a full range of diacritics are currently in development," says Josse.
You can find out more about Josse via his Instagram or LinkedIn.
If you would like to be featured in this series spotlighting designers, typographers and illustrators, get in touch with Rosie Hilder.
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