Studio René Bieder’s humanist sans release Nylo seeks to fully revitalise its typographic genre

Continuing their monthly drops, alongside their custom and retail typographic practice, Berlin-based type designer René Bieder’s first release of 2023 comes in the form of Nylo, a sans serif designed to revitalise the humanist genre. “If you want to design a humanist sans serif, a few features are usually predefined,” Bieder tells us, citing their typically vertical terminals, large apertures, old-style numbers and tight proportions suitable for setting in text, as well as a standard medium stroke contrast in horizontal and diagonal strokes. “I started with all these features and then added my own mix,” he explains, imbuing the sans serif’s charismatic construction with the flexibility to shift between pragmatic powerhouse and brazen display typeface. “While many humanist sans serifs feel more at home in body text,” he remarks, “I think Nylo is and can be, more than a text workhorse,” available in 20 weights, rife with contextual alternates and striking italic styles. “On the one hand, through its extremes (Thin and Black), it is well suited for headlines,” Bieder continues, “and on the other hand, through its robust and sturdy design,” he suggests, “it lives somewhere between the dynamic of a Thesis and the plainness of a Frutiger.” Bringing a much-needed colour and character to an often under-appreciated type style that was at its most popular during the 1990s. As Bieder recalls, “during the design, I had this image of nineties softshell jackets in bright colours in my head all the time,” regaling the times when his parents dressed him in such clothing. “Even though the fabric used is not nylon, the name Nylo has the same synthetic taste to me as the jackets I wore back then,” Bieder adds, appropriately concluding, “with a contemporary twist.”