Paramount

Paramount is a study in humanist geometry. The typeface family begins with a rational, grounded tone, from which neofuturistic branches emerge. While ahistorical in nature, Paramount balances forward-looking atmospheres with the legacy of iconic, pseudogeometrical typefaces like Bauhaus.

Designed by Swiss designer Chi-Long Trieu, Paramount conveys a visionary quality—sleek, minimalist, where precision and exploration converge. The typeface concretizes an intriguing ambivalence, blending the neo-retro, post-retro, and future-nostalgic in a way that feels equally fitting for branding a spaceship as for packaging everyday products. Paramount’s numerous alternate letterforms add rhythm and texture, providing a logo-like uniqueness when used in a single word. These stylistic alternates offer substantial shifts in tone and texture within text, giving designers flexibility to adapt Paramount across various applications.

The Paramount type system includes two sans-serif subfamilies: “Paramount,” a geometric design, and “Paramount Neo,” a slightly more informal, neofuturistic cut. Both families are available in rounded versions, aptly named “Paramount Rounded” and “Paramount Neo Rounded.”

In its Rounded variations, Paramount embraces softer, more playful shapes by easing sharp edges. Paramount Rounded retains the core structure of the original sharp-edged design while introducing a cushioned, approachable feel. The regular and rounded fonts share the same dimensions and proportions, allowing them to be mixed harmoniously to create complex and dynamic typographic hierarchies.

Paramount brings a systematic, lightly varied rhythm in its typesetting. It maintains a relatively large x-height without sacrificing its potential for small-size use. While its lowercase letters have an almost visually consistent proportional width, a selection of uppercase characters are on the narrower side (A, B, E, F, I, L, P, R, S, T, U, V, Y, Z) while others are wide (C, D, G, H, J, M, O, Q, W, X), resulting in a dynamic, flexible texture.

The a features a rounded bowl, with a smooth connection to its stem and vertical terminals, all typical of its geometric roots. Some key glyphs give away the organic nature of Paramount’s proportions: crossbars for E and F extend slightly; top bowl for B tends to stand out; high-waisted crossbar for the G set a distinctive feel.

Alternates include a single-storey a, futuresque geometric C and G, “avant-gardesque” sloped A, M, V, W, v, and w (all equipped with flat-right and flat-left versions), and y comes in a more conventional, normcore design. Numerals come in all their various typographic flavours, including superscripts and subscripts. The same is true for lowercase and uppercase letters, punctuation, and many symbols complete the set.

Specifically in Paramount Neo, distinctive design features lies in the letters a, b, d, g, m, n, p, q, and r: these share a ductus that’s abide to a single-stroke construction. Similarly, B, P, R, 3, and 8 follow this principle, with B, R, and 8 sharing the unique trait of an untouching mid-stroke connection. Letters A, E, F, L, M, N, S, V, W, Z, and numerals 1, 4, 5, and 7 have softened, rounded corners, replacing sharp angles. Y and y stand out with an eccentric design: a U-shape sitting on a vertically centered stroke, echoing the structure of Q with its vertical tail.

Paramount CJK support is powered by FZLTHPro Global (Founder Type), Sandoll GtNeo2Uni (Sandoll), TP Sky Fitfont (Type Project).