Originally released in 1968, Forma was the Italian type foundry Nebiolo’s answer to Helvetica. It was created by a team of eight designers, led by the legendary Aldo Novarese, that Nebiolo assembled to design a more mature and humane neo-grotesque. As a result, Forma’s rationality is tempered by its warmth, and its trademark single-story a sets it apart from the rest. Issued in metal over a decade after Helvetica and Univers, Forma was relatively late to the neutral sans serif game. It never made the jump to phototypesetting and virtually disappeared after Nebiolo closed its doors in 1978. However, publications designer Roger Black always continued to admire the design, and in 2013 asked me to revive it for his redesign of Hong Kong Tatler magazine. I’ll admit it: when I first looked at Forma, I thought it was a bit boring. But through Roger’s eyes, I began to see the typeface in a new light. Gazing at his old type specimens, we looked beyond its obvious Helveticaishness and saw the culmination of an entire era of typography: an era when formal purity was the ultimate design achievement, when the spacing of headlines was outrageously tight, and when neutral neo-grotesque sans serifs were actually something fresh and exciting to read. Our digital interpretation, named Forma DJR, seeks to revive that excitement.



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