FF Signa Stencil

FF Signa is a characteristically Danish design, rooted in architectural lettering rather than book typography. Originally created for signage—hence the name—FF Signa is now a typographic family with three widths. All weights include italics, small caps, and several styles of figures. Because of the quality of this “vernacular-lettering-turned-typeface” conversion, FF Signa received a Danish Design Prize in 2002. FF Signa is radically different from most sanses made for text that were published during the 1990s. It neither belongs to the humanist sans category, nor is it on the list of typefaces based on 19th-century grotesques. Its concise letterforms produce clear and harmonious word images. Yet its proportions are more classically based, and the underlying geometry has been subtly refined to create letterforms that are at once harmonious and contemporary. These features make FF Signa pleasant to read, even at small sizes. Over time, the typeface has developed into a versatile family, with Condensed, Extended, and Correspondence versions. In 2005, the Signa Serif family was added; and between 2011 and 2016, a Slab version and stencil variants of each were created. The resulting FF Signa type system may be used in corporate identity work, brochures, magazines, general communication, books, apps, and mobile publications.