Axo, designed by Charles Mazé, was published in 2024 by Abyme, a type foundry founded by John Morgan and Adrien Vasquez in London. It is a rounded, monolinear and geometric typeface that draws on various 20th-century writing models from the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The ubiquitous letterforms, found on school manuals, technical drawings and architectural plans contributed to the enduring use of sans serif typefaces and the development of “rounded” typefaces that are still commonly used today.

In 1906, British calligrapher and type designer Edward Johnston stripped the roman alphabet to expose its “essential forms”.[1] This simple, monolinear letterform was quickly borrowed by educators to teach children how to write a “print-script” or “block letters”.[2] “Redis” or “plattenfeder” (palette) nibs , produced in 1912 by the German pen manufacturer Heintze & Blanckertz and soon imitated in Germany and abroad, would become reliable tools to easily make strokes of constant weight and the distinctive rounded terminals (“schnurzug”), which are the natural product of the shape of the nib. These tools sparked the production of many writing manuals for “blockschrift” letters, often using primary forms as a starting point: a triangle for the A, a perfectly orthogonal X, and a circular O.

In the following years, many countries established national standards for handwriting and lettering in the fields of mechanics, engineering, public works, construction, architecture and urbanism. The need for compatible standards between different countries led to the creation of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in 1947.

In France, the Association française de normalisation (Afnor) was created in 1926 for this purpose. They would go on to publish three standards. The first, E04-10, from 1932–33, is an “écriture bâton” (sans serif) in the style of those found in France at the same period, lacking the confidence of their contemporaries from Germany and Switzerland, but charming nethertheless.[3]

The second standard, E04-105, from 1949, is similar to the “écriture script”, a model introduced in 1945 in the French school curriculum. Also described as “écriture technique normalisée”, E04-105 fulfilled the need for simplicity and legibility in drawings, diagrams, and plans much more efficiently than its predecessor. It would be turned into stencils, whose widespread use would reinforce a feeling of a stereotyped, engineered appearance. The model’s flexibility allowed for easy shifts of width and weight (the latter obtained by changing the writing tool), foreshadowing the typographic variations that would become commonplace in the second half of the 20th century.

E04-105’s successor, from 1971, is an unrelated, more technical model traced over a grid (a “technoid blockschrift”).[4] Its shapes are sturdier than those of E04-105, as they needed to withstand the important scale reduction allowed by the newly introduced photocopiers.

In the spirit of its models, Axo was designed as a “stroke font”. “Skeletons” were drawn in different widths, and strokes were applied to the path to obtain different weights, favouring geometry over typographic refinement and optical corrections. It is available in 15 styles: 3 widths (Narrow, Normal, Wide) and 5 weights (Light, Regular, Book, Medium, Bold), which are intended to work together, paired to create rhythm, hierarchy and emphasis. An italic style is in preparation.

For more about letterings standards, read Charles Mazé’s Essential forms on Abyme’s website here (in English). A French translation of the essay will be published by Association Presse Offset in their Petite collection soon.