Sanomat Sans Family

Sanomat Sans is a straightforward geometric sans serif, originally designed for display usage in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s most widely-read newspaper. The sharp points on diagonal characters reference the iconic architectural lettering in Helsinki’s main square, close to the newspaper’s offices. To temper the monotonous texture caused by the many repeating letters in Finnish words, the bowls have a subtle asymmetry, giving the face a warm tone more typical of a humanist sans. The nine weights of the Sanomat Sans family grew out of the need to express many different personalities in the newspaper’s various offerings: from punchy bold weights, including a Stencil Black, for the younger readership of the weekly magazine Nyt to sophisticated thin weights for the more literary flavor of the monthly Kuukausiliite. In the process of satisfying the needs of all of these different design teams, the family evolved to include exhaustive set of alternates, making it something of a chameleon. See the PDF specimen for examples of how these alternates can be combined to fine-tune the personality of a piece of text.