Patriot by Khang Chien @ Re.publish: a smooth display sans with character
Some people tend to look down on globalization and think that it’s either an offshoot of colonialism or an inevitable consequence of cultural Marxism or some shit, designed to steamroll traditional values and the nuclear family.
I’ll tell you right now, those people are dipshits.
To illustrate my point, allow me to introduce you to Republish, a “collection of open-source typefaces inspired by Vietnamese typographic remnants.”
Republish have this to say about themselves
Republish is a self-initiated and exploratory project by Behalf Studio. The project seeks to investigate the typographic remnants, hidden in the apertures of urban landscape and archived materials, and revive them into digital typefaces.
and I don’t know why, but it drives ol’ hipster me crazy with type lust.
There are currently five typefaces available for (free, for both personal and commercial use) download on their site. All of them look at least great, but Westgate and Patriot are [emoji with heart eyes because I’m a GenXer and need to appear cool]. Both of them are display sans-serifs, which, as you might have guessed if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, are my favorite thing in the world. I kinda like my kids, too.
Patriot is, however, by far the most distinctive of the two. As I’ve said many times, distinctive is good, but it’s also kinda limiting. This is what its designer has to say about the typeface
Inspired by the hand-lettered typography on the cover of a historic songbook archived in the Hồ Chí Minh Museum, Patriot expresses its confident charisma through the bold and utilitarian letterforms. Traces of Art Deco, Bauhaus and hints of Constructivism are preserved in the digital typeface, promising a progressive and influential voice when used in proper manners
Patriot is a display sans serif typeface with a great quantity of distinctive features, from irregular crossbars to abrupt diagonal strokes. It also demonstrates its industrialist nature with a uniformity in weight, and no flourishes nor distinctions between thick and thin lines.
I know what you’re thinking:
THAT SOUNDED PRETENTIOUS!
〰️
THAT SOUNDED PRETENTIOUS! 〰️
I call BS to that. I could understand all of it, and I used to think that “penile colony” meant “a colony of dicks” until very recently.
Anyhoo. Patriot comes in SEVEN (count ‘em) weights and it doesn’t have italics, small caps or any of that rich-people stuff.
But seriously, it’s really gorgeous. Here’s a design I did in like five minutes with it. It made things so easy.
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