MAD Sans

MAD Sans is the blue collar workhorse of the MAD font family. It was built up from skeleton forms of found AutoCAD material, which became the structure of the Light weights. The family was then expanded to include Regular and Bold weights with matching Italics, using the Light weights as a framework for the expansion.

Following these ‘Open’ weights, a Fill version became established, opening up another interesting side to the family. It has an air of familiarity mixed with a certain roughness that works in both larger and smaller sizes.

Designer Dries Wiewauters fascination for the typography programmed in CAD systems arose while working with CAD drawings at Werkplaats Typografie. MAD is an acronym for Machine Aided Design, a direct reference to CAD (Computer-Aided Design), which reveals the typeface’s starting point.

Early printings of CAD plans were done with plotters that drew every single line of the instruction, special typefaces had to be designed for the dimensions and other information. These were constructed out of lines and not outlines of shapes. With their rendering dictated by the resolution of the output device, their final form was not fixed. The two type families are a reinterpretation that tries to make the most of their grid-based nature — a tribute to historical and forgotten form.

MAD Sans is available in four weights — Light, Regular, Bold and Black — with corresponding italics. It is also available in a parallel filled version in four weights — Light Fill, Regular Fill, Bold Fill and Black Fill — again with corresponding italics. It is available for licensing in a core Standard (‘STD’) version and Professional (‘PRO’) versions. The latter contains OpenType features and stylistic alternates.