FF Megano is a linear humanist sans in six weights. It is one of over a dozen families from French designer Xavier Dupré in the FontFont library. Like most of Dupré’s typefaces, FF Megano blends “sweet and aggressive shapes.” The concept for FF Megano came to Dupré while taking a French TGV train. The TGV – or Train à Grande Vitesse – is France’s high-speed rail system, the envy of the world both in their engineering and design. According to Dupré, “I wanted to make a ‘fun sans’ like Zuzana Licko’s Triplex.” The first sketches laid out a display design with strange shapes, which became more classical and usable in text thanks to the addition of subtle human touches. “When I designed the regular beta initial font, the cosmetic packaging studio of the agency where I worked was interested in this font, and I completed other weights and italics,” Dupré added. “We usually don’t have this combination in one family: humanistic and calligraphic shapes, roundness in diagonals (especially in the uppercase), ‘unserious’ stars, and arrows,” Dupré says. “I tried to mix what I like in typography – humanistic oblique axis, high readability, and a touch of fun.” At release, the fully developed typeface featured more human, round forms, less angular than the initial test designs. The family is made more versatile by its complement of arrows, present in all weights.
