Two condensed widths for Sanomat

Sanomat was designed by Paul Barnes with the assistance of Berton Hasebe for Sami Valtere’s 2013 redesign of Helsingin Sanomat, the most widely read daily newspaper in Finland. Over the ensuing decade, we also provided Hesari with high-contrast Banner and low-contrast Slab variants. When the current creative team came back to us in 2023 to ask if we could come up with a weight or two of a condensed version for use in the paper’s monthly magazine Kuukausiliite, we ran some experiments to see just how narrow we could push the design. We emerged with two new families – Sanomat Condensed and Sanomat X Condensed – along with a variable font to give users access to the widths in between.

The Hesari team’s request for a condensed width gave us the opportunity to return to the original design and expand it with two new widths in all weights, making the family fuller and more versatile. As Sanomat gets narrower, the x-height grows taller and the serifs become shorter, though they take on some depth to gain a little compensatory weight. The flared terminals likewise gain depth to remain prominent. Tighter setting becomes possible with the reduction in serif length, which produces a pleasing density while retaining the elegance and beauty of the regular width.

Sanomat is far from an ordinary newspaper face. It possesses grace and elegance throughout the weight range, and takes an unusual approach to serifs. The family’s development in response to specific constraints of time and place make it fresh and unexpected elsewhere, today. Its gentle curves and humanist disposition echo Finnish twentieth century architecture and design. Though originally drawn for editorial work, Sanomat’s distinctive personality adapts easily to other environments like fashion and beauty, and its subdued curves breathe life into otherwise sterile layouts on screen.