Uxum Grotesque sees Bureau Nuits reinterpret the historic Basque dialect through a contemporary lens

Bordeaux-based studio Bureau Nuits first created Uxum Grotesque as a single weight typeface as part of a commissioned visual identity project. However, due to demand, they’ve taken it a few steps further and developed 6 weights, italics, 391 glyphs and variable functions. The original inspiration for the typeface was the Basque language, also known as Euskara, that’s spoken in the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in northern Spain and southwestern France. The idea was to reinterpret the historic dialect through a contemporary lens, transforming its distinctive shapes into something legible and usable. Uxum is designed to be an ‘identity’ typeface with a distinguished yet functional character, making it perfect for both headline and body text. The versatile sans serif has a high x-height, short descenders and tight line spacing, as well as a host of OpenType features such as a single-story ‘a’, geometric ‘g’ and ‘st’, ‘ct’, ‘fl’ and ‘fi’ ligatures.