Worldwide: classic type
with a 'breasty' quality

By Tony Sutton

Readers are aware that we change the headline faces in each issue of Design magazine. With this issue we've gone further: every bit of editorial type in this issue (except cover blurbs) is set in a single typeface – Worldwide.

The typeface was born when I asked Nick Shinn to produce a single weight headline face with two weights of text for the Worldwoman project. My brief, from Worldwoman editor Lesley Riddoch, was to generate a familiar-looking, classic news type, with a "breasty" quality. Everyone knows what that means, but it's hard to put into words - so I left it to Shinn's intuition.

Here's what he says about the face, which was later enlarged to include a Bold headline style, and Italic, Bold and Black text weights: "Worldwide is a typeface in the Century or 'Modern' idiom, designed with present day newspaper usage in mind. That's to say, it's somewhat condensed and combines a strong, traditional form with subtle finish. The characters follow the Century genre closely, although there is more variety in the width of the capitals: a narrowing of the E and a widening of the M, for instance, which gives a more even color and less distortion.

"There are no straight lines in the construction of Worldwide. Vertical strokes
are subtly 'cinched' in the middle, and the outside serif corners are lightly Ôbarbed.Õ
Acute joints between strokes are hollowed out with 'ink traps.' These devices counteract the softening of the type that occurs with press gain, and the clogged-up, dirty impression it can cause.

"The same detailing which works imperceptibly to create clarity at text size provides visual interest in the headline fonts. These styles are also a bit more condensed and lighter than their text counterparts. ThereÕs really not a lot of difference between the headline and the text versions, but what there is makes all the difference in the world.

"What else is there for a commissioning designer to say?

This article originally appeared in design magazine.