F37® revives club culture’s visual craft with its identity for Clubbed

When F37® published their book Clubbed: A Visual History of UK Club Culture, they documented 35 years of club design through logos, posters, tickets and ephemera. Now the Manchester-based type foundry and design studio has launched a club night under the same name, transforming their archival research into a working promoter. The first event, a night of trance classics at Manchester’s Area venue, required an identity that could honour the visual sophistication of clubs like Cream and The Haçienda whilst cutting through today’s scroll-and-forget social media graphics. At the centre of the identity sits F37 Euphoria, a custom variable font that moves from solid letterforms to scattered particles. The transformation mirrors both the diamond dust-covered book and the build-up of a trance track reaching its peak. Creating this typeface presented technical challenges that pushed beyond typical font design parameters. Lead Type Designer Ryan Hellyer Williamson explains the two approaches required: “The static font was a technological battle, triumphing over file size limits in text settings environments. We approached its production in a way that allowed us to create both the cascading display font and a solid text type from the same underlying design.” The variable version, designed purely as a motion design asset, created consistency across different applications. Rather than motion designers creating their own scatter effects, the variable font ensured uniform behaviour regardless of who was animating it. It also enabled live experimentation with audio outputs on the night using browser-based applications. The transition from solid to particles demanded careful calibration between visual quality and practical constraints. “The solid state, made of small circular particles, had a slightly bumpy edge compared to the solid static fonts,” notes Hellyer Williamson. “To solve this, we had to balance the density of the particles against the file size of the font.” A denser particle arrangement would have produced smoother edges but compromised file size and performance. The team opted for a less dense solution, reasoning that the variable font would never remain static for long in its intended motion applications. They added depth through two axes – scatter and particle size – with the latter creating an illusion of distance as particles disperse.