CoType Foundry expands the Aeonik family with a semi-rounded sibling

When clients first started asking CoType Foundry for a rounded version of Aeonik, Mark Bloom hesitated. The typeface had built its reputation on clarity and geometric precision. Its clean, structured DNA that spoke to brands like Revolut, Eurosport and Alipay. Adding soft edges felt like it might dilute what made Aeonik work. But the requests kept coming. And as Bloom explored the possibilities, he realised that softness wasn’t a compromise. Aeonik Soft emerged from that exploration – a typeface that retains its neo-grotesque backbone whilst introducing a warmer, more approachable character through semi-rounded corners applied with careful restraint. Full rounding was tested and rejected. “It looked too comical, especially in the heavier weights,” Bloom explains. “The grotesque flavour disappeared, and some of the letters started to feel more like bubblegum than type.” The problem became particularly apparent in characters like the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘s’ in Aeonik Black. Fully rounding their terminals would have eliminated the downward arches entirely, creating forms that followed different structural rules than their lighter counterparts. That inconsistency across the family would have undermined the design’s coherence.