David Rudnick spent four years drawing Arsenal's new blackletter typeface by hand
David Rudnick on "borderline impossible" process of designing Arsenal typeface
Designer David Rudnick and Arsenal Creative Studio lead Johnnie Campbell discuss Rocastle, a bespoke three-weight blackletter type family four years in the making. Named for the late Arsenal legend David Rocastle, it is the final piece of a visual identity system that also includes Northbank and Chapman. Rudnick calls the brief borderline impossible: the typeface had to feel both eternal and forever new, English yet universal, and only Arsenal could have said yes to it.
At the top of this system we needed something completely unique and borderline impossible, typographically. Somehow it had to be this contradiction, that was forever dynamic and new and somehow felt eternal and had always been there; that it somehow felt English, but also transcended that and became universal.
- jsnell
I don't know that I got anything out of this other than that it took a long time. I think there is an interesting article to be written on this. Like, what were the concrete requirements? Why were those the requirements? Maybe show how one letter evolved over time as the project went on, and explain why.
But instead the article is effectively the Gravitational Pull of Pepsi[0].
[0] https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...
- RobotToaster
Is it me or are typeface designers some of the most pretentious people in tech? And that's a really high bar.
- sailorganymede
Never thought I'd see my team on HN but I really love the changes Arsenal has done. I remember only 10 years ago, we were super corporate and quite trend chasing (with our captain Aubameyang et al. doing reaction videos and sweg sweg) and you could really tell the messaging was supposed to be sanitised and generic. I noticed esp. when Arteta got in, we started to actually have an identity of our own with the typefaces and a brand new song and all the focus on our history etc.