One could say this is the “art of mechanics”. After leaving school at 15, I studied for 2 years at art college and qualified (with a distinction) in Technical Illustration. It was hoped that I would take over my father’s business as a car mechanic, however, it was clear by my early teens that this wasn’t the career route for me. My father was a mechanic for the majority of his working life and my mother was/is an artist. There are other reasons why Meccanica is the way it is. While I personally find its sheared characters a little harsh, I think that overall, it has subliminally influenced my sketches for Meccanica. I must also admit that there may be an influence from Neville Brody’s recent custom typeface for Channel 4 in the UK, Horseferry. While drawing Meccanica, I referred often to one of my favourite geometric sans, Adrian Frutiger’s Avenir. I wanted a softness to my hexagonally-inspired typeface, which I achieved by chamfering the terminals, joints, bowls and shoulders of each letterform in this geometric sans style so that the end result was a hybrid typeface. Even before starting my initial sketches, I knew that this was not the direction to go in. I have browsed many angular, hexagonal and octagonal fonts over the years and have found them too severe for my tastes and perhaps aligned too rigidly to an angular grid. Obviously the hexagonal forms that define Meccanica are derived from the basic nuts and bolts of engineering, but I have also been inspired, in different ways, by other type designers’ work. Its stems, crossbars, arms and legs retract to form chamfered, hexagonal terminals, and straight, acute-angled joints expand into semi-hexagonal ink traps that all help to give Meccanica a very distinctive aesthetic. So why describe it as “not another geometric sans”? Certainly Meccanica behaves like a geometric sans and sits in the same footprint as many popular sans-serifs out there, yet its modified DNA flattens out opposing bowls and shoulders. Initially designed as a display typeface (perfect for headlines, logotype, branding and short runs of text), Meccanica also reads well as body copy – particularly at smaller point sizes. Inspired by the mechanics of engineering – the humble nut and bolt in particular – Meccanica is a versatile typeface that will give your own typography a distinctive voice. Its defining features include soft, chamfered edges, angular bowls and shoulders, angled/hexagonal terminals, and semi-hexagonal ink traps (in a nutshell). Actually, it is another geometric sans typeface, but this one really does have a unique personality.
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