PureReversal

Swiss typography designer, Bruno Maag, was tagged to rebrand and design a new typeface for Nokia. Above is a well-made short film titled, PureReversal, made by Build, of the woodblock and letterpress printing of the newly minted font. A nice snippet displaying the commingling of the digital and the analog. The woodblocks were created for a limited-edition print run by Matt McKenzie from London’s Paekakariki Press.

From the horse’s mouth:

Dalton Maag first became involved in the rebranding process when Nokia decided that it needed a new typographic direction for its communications, to be combined with the launch of its new generation of mobile phones. It was this need for a new font family that united Nokia’s various departments, each with their own specific requirements, in a common approach to a shared problem.

Dalton Maag was asked by Nokia to design a font family primarily for use in digital media – mobile devices and the web – which would also be versatile enough to be the cornerstone for all of Nokia’s communications worldwide. The new font family had to reflect the traditions of Finnish design: simplicity, clarity, functionality, beauty of form – in short, Pure.

'Pure' typeface by Dalton Maag

Maag founded London based font-house, Dalton Maag, in 1991, after a year in Chicago where he recut the fonts for New Yorker Magazine. Here is an interesting and informative video of Maag questioning the widespread popularity of Helvetica at a design talk on May 20, 2010: