Erik Spiekermann’s FF Unit® is FF Meta®’s younger and wiser sibling. It irons out many of the quirks of its predecessor, dialing back the warmth to a comfortable, if a bit cool, room temperature. With production help from Christian Schwartz, the two expanded the family to include rounded and slab serif variants. In FontFont’s latest release, we’re happy to note that FF Unit Rounded is now in possession of a full set of italics. Six weights in all. While its blunted corners go far to warm the natively cool-tempered Roman, one must observe how its italic doubly brings about this same effect, lifting with it the corners of the observer’s mouth.

Backlit signage was FF Unit Rounded’s first design environment, and you’ll find in its character set an elaborate set of arrows and symbols created for this purpose. This addition of italic styles adds another dimension of visual hierarchy to the typographer’s palette, as well as its distinctive voice.