Looking for expressiveness in neutrality
There are very few times a customer is aware of the typographic implications involved in corporate identity such as the stylistic congruence of the brand, future applications of its use, distribution, the multi-language content to generate, multi-platform support if they have a variety of operating systems & specific applications, and even the payment of licenses depending on the number of workstations on which they should install the corporate typeface. Nevertheless, we are occasionally given the luxury of working and helping in unison to consider and resolve all these aspects.
Starting with the logotype, the Universidad de las Américas Puebla asked for a custom typeface that would stick to the results of the market research and brand perception. The conclusions gave tendencies of neutrality to permeate all sectors on which they are focused (prospects, students, parents, researchers, academics, among many others), and under the constraint of still belonging to the previous logotype composed in a well known sans serif typeface but exaggeratedly over-used.
The result were letters in small caps proportions for the name of the institution and subtle adaptations in the characters of the acronym for the construction of a stronger block.
Upper curves were eliminated in “D” and “P” for more strength.
Once that process was concluded, the need to develop a complete typeface arose. Such typeface would meet the needs of the institution and ensure a long-term investment rather than exorbitant payments of licensing fees for multiple users (more than 2000 stations) of already existing and non exclusive fonts.
That is how Sapientia was born, a typeface that is consistent with both, logotype and brand strategy, and which contains the variables required for the editorial composition that the university produces (externally and internally). Sapientia has writing support for languages with which the UDLAP communicates and the required professional production to work under the most adverse technological contexts.
Conceptually, it is always a challenge to provide a sans serif typeface with a lot of personality since it represent the most basic summary of each character and even more if a guideline is to maintain a neutral environment. It is difficult to decide where to take off and where to put in… when it is enough or when it is too much… and above all, how to accomplish that these decisions, whether small or big, manage to make sense with each other.
Sapientia tries to be full of minute details uniformly distributed along its weight & style variants and it pays tribute to all the great typefaces that contributed since the analysis stage to the decisions made.
