Joshua Darden, in 2008, described Birra Stout as “conjuring whimsy” and “the first release of a still-evolving project which we’ll expand”. The Birra Flight of fonts, conceived by Joyce Ketterer and David Jonathan Ross with art direction by Eben Sorkin, includes Stout, Saison, Bruin, the pending releases of Pils, Lambic, and a (hopefully) continually expanding collection of styles.

Joshua Darden, in 2008, described Birra Stout as “conjuring whimsy” and “the first release of a still-evolving project which we’ll expand”. The Birra Flight of fonts, conceived by Joyce Ketterer and David Johnathan Ross with art direction by Eben Sorkin, includes Stout, Bruin, the pending releases of Pilsner, Lambic, Saison, and a (hopefully) continually expanding collection of styles.

Inspired by the tasting menus offered by craft breweries in North America as “flights”, each style is separately designed by guest designers using a specific type of beer as inspiration. The only other instruction they were given was to “have fun”.

When complete, the flight will comprise a full set of styles (in upright and italic) with beer types arranged so that the color of the beer corresponds to the weight of the style. Upright styles correspond to beers with a dry finish.

About the Designers

Elena Schneider has lived in various places on earth. Always on the lookout for the end of the world – which she couldn’t find in Reading. However, she eventually found it in Húsavík, Iceland. This was to make sure nothing would distract her from designing typefaces. Well, until she got two kids.

Born and bread in Singapore, Mark De Winne finds time for type design when not concentrating on his real passion, food. In fact, he’s thinking of what to have for dinner while eating lunch. He’s also a firm believer in the power of keyboard shortcuts and hopes one day to actually do a pub crawl across the world.

Vera Evstafieva doesn’t watch TV at all, she designs fonts from 5 in the morning. For fun, she bakes a fish Quiche Laurent for every family trip in Cambridgeshire.

After working with Viktoriya Grabowska on multiple projects we were delighted to welcome her as Darden Studio member in 2017.

Joshua Darden founded The Studio and lent his name to it. After publishing several groundbreaking typefaces he wandered off some time in the mid 2010s.

The Birra Flight

Stout by Joshua Darden 2008. Production assistance by Eben Sorkin.
Stout (Bold) arose from years of compulsive doodling in pen and ink, and conjures the whimsy and syncopated contrast of novelty hand lettering in the early 20th century. The first release of a project always intended to evolve, Stout was developed with and published to amuse Matteo Bologna (hence the name being the Italian spelling for Beer).

Bruin by Elena Schneider 2019.
Birra Bruin (Medium Italic) reinterprets the familiar associations with the beer name Oud Bruin (old brown) by adapting the Blackletter font genre — which is the traditional signifier of “Old” in beer packaging design. It goes well beyond the familiar by delivering a vibrant and contemporary Blackletter with a passion for straight lines (or trying to have as few curves as possible). Adding to the Bruin-like richness, Upper- and lowercase don’t have exactly the same voice but create a nice duet when singing together. Uppercase set on its own offers a contrasting feeling.

Saison by Viktoriya Grabowska 2020.
Birra Saison (Thin Italic) doesn’t work — it plays. Provoking the reader’s perception of letterforms in order to play with memory and imagination, it is an exercise in as much evocation as representation. This TDC award winning non-traditional “Thin” disrupts weight classifications. Asking, what style takes up more space than Extra Black and has strokes as light as Hairline? Saison is refreshing like the cloudy body and lofty foam of its namesake beer. It is for your best and most exuberant, typographic picnics.

Lambic by Vera Evstafieva 2020.
Birra Lambic is a font that dances all night at the pub and somehow manages to get to work on time the next day. It is an experiment in hybridization between Celtic letterforms and Italics inspired by the workshop of Irish calligrapher Denis Brown. The result is a pan-European character with flavors of Ireland, Germany, Belgium (and many others — all together slightly slanted) with inherent traces of Medieval Europe.

Pils by Mark De Winne 2021
Birra Pils started as a straight-up revival of some old “lettrès ornée” found in a French specimen book. In its current form, it’s distilled significantly to give you all of the complex flavor and just a touch of lightheadedness. Its skeletal forms reduce the hangover while keeping lots of flair and flavor, with a crisp and tart uppercase, while lowercase brings the funk home. A delightful aftertaste is found in the assortment of emojis to tickle your typographic taste buds.

Additional Credits

Art direction by Eben Sorkin. Promotional images by Quinn Keaveney, who also art directed promotional videos with assistance by Jeremey Isaac; video editing by Lee Gardner, voiceover by Mae Belen, Lee Gardner, John Hudson, and Lin Ivey. Project management by Joyce Ketterer. Thanks to Jackson Cavanaugh, James Edmondson, Jose Scalone, Alice Savoie, and Robert Esmay.