This typeface comes from a self initiated project called Sápmi, which aims to contribute to keep a group of minority languages alive through solving issues in the education environment.

This re-thought edition takes the name of Aanaar and joins our library with a bigger character set and two new weights which complete the typeface providing a big typographic palette as well as adding stylistic two-story a and g for more advanced readers as well as to enable the typeface to be used in other environments.

The typeface was originally designed for children’s text books. Analysing kid’s typeface design, we identified some important problems and solved them within the boundaries we had. The main concern in a typeface which will be used by children is letter recognition, as they have not yet fully develop their reading skills. For example, letters like “a” and “g” share a very similar structure in this particular kind of typefaces, where the only distinctive part is the descender of the “g”. It is known that the lower part of the letter is the less important feature when reading, therefore we decided to make a clear distinction between them by having an “a” with a spur on the top right. This also helped distinguishing “a” and “o”. Children typefaces usually have one story “a”, making “a” usually too close to “o”. Additionally we moved the joint in “a” upwards and narrowed very slightly the “a” to make sure they cannot be mistaken.

More generally, the x-height is fairly tall and the typeface has a bit of movement which give it a good rhythm helping moving along nicely when reading. Aanaar consists of 5 weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black) plus two Italics (Light Italic and Italic).