FUTURA: A TYPE STUDY

Self-directed project · 2026 · Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator

I set out to design a poster about a single typeface using only that typeface. Futura, Paul Renner’s geometric sans serif from 1927, is built from circles, triangles and squares, which makes it as much a visual system as a font. Working in Illustrator and InDesign, I told its story through typography alone, with no photos or illustrations, and refined the design from a colorful first draft to a bold monochrome final.

First iteration. My first version used pink and blue offset shadows. They added energy, but they pulled attention away from the letterforms themselves.

Final poster. I replaced the color shadows with layered grays, so contrast, scale and Futura’s geometry carry the design on their own. The result is cleaner, more timeless, and truer to the modernist spirit of the typeface.