How a chance sighting of a zero in a road sign led Displaay to its sans serif typeface 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,” Vácha tells us. “That quirky charming shape stuck with us. [Type Designer] Daniel [Quisek] 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.