Proto
Styles
Fast driving by Jack, with the zippy Mazda, quickly excels on the rugged course.
Buy from €70Proto Grotesk ExtraLight
Fast driving by Jack, with the zippy Mazda, quickly excels on the rugged course.
Buy from €70Proto Grotesk Light
Fast driving by Jack, with the zippy Mazda, quickly excels on the rugged course.
Buy from €70Proto Grotesk Regular
Fast driving by Jack, with the zippy Mazda, quickly excels on the rugged course.
Buy from €70Proto Grotesk Bold
Proto In Use
- The New York Times Magazine, 2016 Money Issue
For the 2016 annual Money Issue of The New York Times Magazine, design director Gail Bichler used Proto Grotesk for cover design & interior layout. - Taiping Tianguo: A History Of Possible Encounters
The exhibition A History of Possible Encounters was conceived by Para Site and first shown in Hong Kong in 2012. It subsequently traveled to SALT Istanbul, NUS Museum Singapore, and e-flux New York. The catalog was designed by textandpictures and co-published with Sternberg Press in 2015. Proto Grotesk is used throughout. It’s paired with Monotype Baskerville for captions and obliqued Hobo for inline emphasis.
How did Ai Weiwei, Frog King Kwok, Tehching Hsieh and Martin Wong—four artists of Chinese heritage hailing from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and San Francisco, respectively—all end up in New York in the heady 1980s? By considering them together, what might we learn about their practices and this storied time and place in art history? With these questions in mind, Taiping Tianguo: A History of Possible Encounters takes nuanced glimpses of the artists’ overlapping experiences, networks and friendships. Including a rich collection of photographs of the artists’ work, a timeline (1841–2011) charting general history, art history and biographical information from the exhibition, and essays by Hong Kong curator Doryun Chong, Para Site director Cosmin Costinas, among others, this book underlines the political and gendered nature of the music/art scene in New York art of the 1980s and the simultaneous emergence of contemporary Chinese art.
6¾×9½ inches / 144 pp (47 b&w and 69 color) / ISBN: 978-3-95679-116-1
Information
Design
Jean-Baptiste Levée
Release Date
2014-07-15Team
Ilya Ruderman
Yury Ostromentsky
Emilios Theofanous
Yoann Minet
Hugues Gentile
Awards & distinctions
Type Directors Club New York Certificate of excellence 2015
Type Directors Club Tokyo Selection 2015
Hiii Typography Merit Award 优异奖 2014
Typecache best of 2014
Typo365 best of 2014
Typographica's favourite of 2014
Typefacts Best of 2014
Fontwerk Die besten Schriften 2014
About this font
Over the last hundred years or so, utilitarian typefaces have shed most of their quirks and eccentricities on the way to becoming more versatile and universal. That makes some sense, but there’s no reason type can’t be both steadfast and peculiar. Drawing from an early German sans serif used for catalog text, Proto Grotesk revives an era when clunkiness was a virtue. Its pedigree is varied, vacillating between Egyptian and Modern, round and edged, even sans and slab. Despite these contradictions, its posture is nothing less than sturdy and forthright. Proto Grotesk is strange but steady.
Formats
Static (OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2)About the designers
Jean-Baptiste Levée is a type designer with a strong focus on corporate and bespoke typefaces.
Jean-Baptiste Levée
CEO, founder
Jean-Baptiste Levée (1981) has designed over a hundred typefaces for industry, moving pictures, fashion and media. He is the founder of the independent foundry Production Type.
