concept

Daily Quasimodo rings the bells of Notre Dame. The Parisian citizens enjoy the magnificent sound of his peal of bell, but himself, deformed and hunchbacked, they are detesting cause of his ugliness…

Far away from fiction, could a typeface be functional and anaesthetic at the same time?

The ‘UGL-Y’ is a space-saving typeface, has a technical appearance and is optimised for legibility in really small text sizes and for the use for bad display conditions.

Altogether, the elements to support the use for bad display conditions create a technical appearance. On the one hand the extreme ink-traps, the angular diagonals and the partly huge and emphasised serifs do fulfil their function and on the other hand they are a distinctive stylistic device. This circumstance give the ‘UGL-Y’ typeface – despite or even regarding the functional ugliness – a certain charm.

Especially in small text sizes, the distinctive character takes a back seat and the pure function comes to the fore.

characteristics

The style of the ‘UGL-Y’ is adjusted for every glyph to ensure – even while rotated or mirrored – an optimal distinction between all the glyphs. The highest distinction enables a fast and clear identification meanwhile the general impression of words and sentences is troubled as less as possible.

If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page… When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful. Adrian Frutiger

character set

On demand, the ‘up-to-now-version’ of the typefaces is available as full functional OpenType-font.

• UGL-Y Medium