Anna Pizzey

Grindhaus Sans is a cross between a geometric & humanist grotesk, inspired by the vintage grotesk typography of the 19th century. A style that was popular on shop windows, book covers, and minimalist labelling.

The letterforms in Grindhaus Sans have slightly varying stroke widths for higher legibility, adobe latin 1 language support, five weights, and unique stylistic alternates & ligatures.

Freehouse is a reinterpretation of the well-remembered Watney’s logo, a brewery and pub chain infamous for its poor quality beer and brutalist decor. In Design Research Unit’s corporate guidelines from 1966 the font is described as Clarendon Bold Expanded — however, this is not the case. Clarendon has square serifs, whereas the Watney’s font is rounder and friendlier. A fixture of the Britsh high street landscape for decades, this digitisation adds a full international character set, numbers, punctuation and many other characters that did not exist in the original. A distressed version that evokes rough print on a wet beermat has also been developed.

Spencer is a calligraphic semi-serif type family that has been carefully designed to provide easily distinguishable letterforms that are practical in use, as well as aesthetically appealing. It’s natural and organic forms comes from a deep consideration of the efficiency of the visible word and provides the typeface with a distinct and unique voice.



Named after Herbert Spencer, an educator and researcher of legibility at the Royal College of Art in the sixties and seventies, and influenced by other early typographers and legibility researchers, such as Walter Tracy and John Harris. Spencer was designed as part of a legibility study by Sofie Beier and Kevin Larson.