Philadelphia Art Museum

Custom typeface, wordmark suite, and badge lettering for the core of Philadelphia Art Museum’s typographic palette. Fairmount Serif originated from a deep dive into Philadelphia typographic history. In a search for type references that balanced the industrial quality of American sans-serifs in the 1930s with a classical sensibility, Hess Neobold came to the forefront. Its designer, Sol Hess, had attended PMSIA—the school that eventually evolved into the museum itself—and later succeeded Frederic Goudy as art director of Lanston Monotype, based nearby in Philadelphia. We incorporated formal cues from contemporaneous typefaces and created a type family that reflects both Philadelphia’s character and the classical spirit of the museum’s architecture and collection.

Made with Gretel

Type design:	Ryan Bugden
Identity:	Gretel: Ryan Moore, Dylan Mulvaney, Andy Keating, Kasia Galla Barrett, Magnus Atom, Alaijah Hampton, Jacob Hwan Lee, Fabien Zadno, Janet Delavan, Evan White
Web:	Gretel, Self Aware, Gone Fishing
Museum team:	Paul Dien, Luis Bravo, Gretchen Dykstra, James Paris, Mia Paltrow-Murray, Ridge Chin, Molly Mignano, Tina Yang