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King's Cross

custom typefaceculture

As part of the on-going real estate development of the King’s Cross area (an area surrounding a major North London, UK train station) Colophon collaborated with SomeOne London. The agency commissioned us to create a bespoke headline typeface for the area, becoming a vital piece of the asset toolkit created by the agency for the new brand.

Typeface
Battlebridge
Comissioner
Someone, London
Year
2017
Styles
1, Bold
Coverage
Latin-2 Encoded
Classification
Condensed Sans-Serif Display
URL
kingscross.co.uk
someoneinlondon.com
Slowly moving on from its slightly dubious post-industrial past, the King’s Cross area of London is now home to a host of ambitious, creative and forward thinking companies, restaurants and residents. New developments notably include the campus for Central Saint Martin’s School for Art & Design, Google’s new London HQ and a studio favourite, indian-restaurant Dishoom.
The area’s industrial heritage, and ‘ghost’ typography gave us a strong catalyst for the work. The typeface would firstly be utilised on the mark (in the form of two variations, a stacked and single line variant) of the King’s Cross logo. A superscripted lowercase, with accompanying underline, references back to the area’s hand-painted sign writing and industrial past.
The area’s industrial heritage, and ‘ghost’ typography gave us a strong catalyst for the work. The typeface would firstly be utilised on the mark (in the form of two variations, a stacked and single line variant) of the King’s Cross logo. A superscripted lowercase, with accompanying underline, references back to the area’s hand-painted sign writing and industrial past.
To balance the face’s strong industrial and solid grounding, we utilised delicate punctuation to give dynamic levels of expression. This was implemented via four stylistic sets, allowing designers and type-users alike advanced control of the typeface.
The area of King’s Cross, before being engulfed in the metropolis of London, was the location of the village of Battlebridge, and this felt like a fitting namesake for the typeface.

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