Introducing Displaay’s road sign-inspired sans serif Perfektta

The idea for Displaay’s sans serif Perfektta brewed quite instantly, when Founder & Type Designer Martin Vácha snapped a photo while on holiday in Sardinia, Italy, in 2021. The object that drew his attention was some unusually carved zeroes on a road sign. “Instead of perfect ovals, these zeros looked more like rhombuses – lazy cutting or genius design? Maybe both,” Type Designer Daniel Quisek tells us.

“That quirky charming shape stuck with us. Daniel immediately sketched a first draft, and just like that, a typeface started to take form,” says Vácha. Just like the origin of the typeface, its name too came from a chance sighting, when Vácha was walking past a DIY shop in his neighbourhood and noticed its name – Perfecta. “The witty name refers to the imperfect construction that contrasts with some perfect shapes in various parts of the letters. These two aspects of the interaction create the right tension in the final aesthetic of the typeface,” he adds.

The project called for some research into road signage typefaces, which led the team to stumble upon Italy’s Alfabeto Stretto typeface, widely used for its road signs. Interestingly, Alfabeto Stretto is believed to be influenced by or loosely based on the British Transport typeface, which was developed for UK road signage in the 1950s. However, Stretto was not a direct adaptation; instead, it features cruder, more heavily condensed modifications.

“It's interesting to note that the design of the zero in the original example is quite peculiar, as are other characters. This probably stems from modifications made to the original British Transport alphabet glyphs to make them bolder and narrower. A humorous detail is that the distorted version in standard proportions is called ‘Alfabeto Normale’,” says Vácha.

Drawing from these various stylistic sources, but mostly from that initial off-kilter zero that Vácha spotted while on the road, the Perfektta typeface family includes eight weights and matching italics with a 13° angle, resulting in 16 styles and becoming the perfect fit for the modern designer’s toolkit. The variable font offers further flexibility, supporting two axes – weight and italic. “All styles remain consistent in design, even across the wide range from Thin to Heavy. This time, instead of offering a large typeface collection, we focused on creating a simple and handy tool,” says Quisek.

What sets Perfektta apart is the process through which it was created. As Vácha mentions, when the project started in 2021, the team didn’t set any expectations about how soon the typeface would be completed or how it would fit into Displaay’s catalogue. “During the process, we tested different proportions, and the rhombus style shaping worked best in a narrow width, which we completed in the end. Since the project started in 2021, we were surprised to find there was still a gap in the market for a grotesque typeface like this. Our own retail library was also missing a distinct, narrow sans serif, so we were more than happy that these needs were met, even if partly by coincidence,” he adds.

Now complete and ready to be released into the wild, Perfektta promises to be a perfectly flexible typeface, a seamless fit for many needs. “The regular style, with alternate characters like the double-storey ‘g’ and the hooked ‘l,’ is very readable in small sizes and longer paragraphs. The heavier weights are strong and bold in large sizes,” notes Quisek. “That’s why we believe this humble but offbeat typeface is perfect for everything from wordmarks and music festival posters to product packaging.”