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Tofino

Tofino
Eight weights of “West Coast Swiss,” designed for the screen.
by Alanna Munro

Available through Lost Type

Pay-what-you-want for a personal licence. Commercial Licences start at $80 and include a set of three free postcards!
Get Tofino →
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Tofino allows you to be
delicate
or lets you speak
boldly.

A System of Styles

Tofino comes with eight weights that are designed to work together to create hierarchy and clearly communicate your message.
Thin
Tofino Thin
Light
Pairs well with Tofino Light for headings that have an even-looking texture
Book & Medium
Tofino Book is designed as the text style that keeps the light tone of these weights going when more needs to be said. And if you need to add some emphasis, Tofino Medium is up for the task!

Knock It Out!

Tofino Medium is designed to work as the knockout version of Tofino Regular when you need light text on a dark background.
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Features

It’s nice to feel fancy, even with everyday stuff. Tofino has opentype features that elevate your typography (+10 to fancy).

Cap-Specific Punctuation

Alanna Munro @alannamun · 2m
@AMUNRO87 ¡I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU A CAKE [4] YOUR BIRTHDAY! ¿ARE YOU EXCITED? (I AM!) #thecakeisNOTalie

Tabular Figures

PANTRY
ALL-PUR FLOUR 2.5KG
$6.49
FRY’S PREM COCOA
$6.99
BAKING SODA
$4.50
ALL-VEG SHORTENING
$2.99
FREE-RNG EGGS
$3.12
MAR. CHERRIES
$7.59
TOTAL
$31.68

Fractions

2 cups sugar
3/4 cup shortening
1 1/4 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 eggs
2 cups cake flour
2 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cocoa powder
2 cups buttermilk

Superscript & Subscript

Directions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
  2. Sift together the C4H8O4, the C4H8O4, the NaHCO3 and the NaCl1.
  3. Beat the C9H17C9H17O2 and C12H22O11 together until they are fluffy. Add the C6H12O3N2 and C8H8O32 and beat thoroughly.
  4. Bake for about 35 or 40 minutes.3
  1. The chemical formula for these ingredients has been simplified to a representative formula.
The post cards you’ll recieve when you order a Commercial License of Tofino, shown on the beach in an envelope.

Download me

Pay-what-you-want for a personal license. Commercial Licenses start at $80, and include a free set of postcard prints.

Get Tofino →
↓ Edit everything ↓
Ocean Currents
Topographical factors shaping the ocean surface
Alanna Munro
The Wet Coast
The effects of weather on the formation of waves
Alanna Munro
Surf And Board
The interaction between water and wood
Alanna Munro
tofino.losttype.com

Tofino,
British Columbia,
Canada

Tofino is a wild place on the coast of British Columbia where waves eternally pound the shore, trees bow to the gales, and rain seems to penetrate even the most waterproof boots.
49.131450°
latitude
-125.895841°
longitude

Alanna Munro • May, 2016

The initial inspiration for Tofino came from an old type specimen from a foundry in Madrid. This typeface from their catalogue, Grotesca Ideal, was a small squared sans serif used for the captions and extra information about each typeface.

A page showing “Grotesca Ideal” from the 1922 Fundición Tipográphica Richard Gans catalogue.
A page showing “Grotesca Ideal” from the 1922 Fundición Tipográphica Richard Gans catalogue.

Grotesca Ideal had some pretty quirky things going on in the design, but I was impressed at how well it was working at small sizes and thought it would be a good starting place for something that would work well on screens today.

Animation showing the stages of the “d” glpyh.
Animation showing the stages of the “f” glpyh.
Animation showing the stages of the “G” glpyh.
Animation showing the stages of the “o” glpyh.
Animation showing the stages of the “r” glpyh.
Animation showing the stages of the “s” glpyh.
A look into how some of the letters have changed as the designs were refined.

West coast swiss

The letters have been refined to be more simplified and legible, but still retain some of their original flavour. Tofino takes the best part of Swiss style and adds warmth and character. I like to describe it as “West Coast Swiss”.

“West Coast Swiss” type specimen using the Tofino typeface.

Display me

The thinnest weight of Tofino is the heart of the design, and because it performed better at display sizes, the rest of the weights began to follow suit. Examining contemporary web design solidified my idea that Tofino should be made for display. Websites of today often contain short, specific, bite-sized chunks of text to keep our ever-shrinking attention spans occupied. These are almost always set at larger sizes — 18px and above — to be eye-catching and easy to read. Tofino fulfils its destiny in these kinds of situations.

Alanna Munro

Print me

But all this doesn’t prevent Tofino from looking great in print as well (its origins were a print typeface after all). Typefaces of today often have to do double duty, as brands want to use a consistent typeface across all print and digital assets. Tofino happily bridges this gap and its selection of 8 weights allows the subtle control often needed in print.

Write me

We live in a global market place, so typefaces of today need to speak many languages. Tofino’s character set supports over 200 latin-based languages.

Upload me

Tofino has been professionally hinted for use on the screen. If you would like to use Tofino in your web projects, you can get a copy of the WOFF files by purchasing a Commercial Licence and emailing me.

And if you want to hear from me, you can sign up for my mailing list:

The post cards you’ll recieve when you order a Commercial License of Tofino, shown on the beach in an envelope.

Download me

Pay-what-you-want for a personal license. Commercial Licenses start at $80, and include a free set of postcard prints.

Get Tofino →

Thank you

Thank you to my husband Alex for his unwavering support and my son James, who thought my proofs looked yummy enough to eat (my baby ate my typeface!). Thanks to my friends, Riley Cran, Kenneth Ormandy, Andrea Husky, Heather Neale, and Cody Jones for being there on a weekly basis and encouraging me to keep going!

HUGE thanks to those who provided feedback! This typeface would be not nearly as complete without you: Riley Cran, Ross Milne, and Dave Bailey.

Typeface built using Glyphs. Mastering and hinting by PSY/OPS. Website by Kenneth Ormandy. Get more awesome fonts at losttype.com.

—Alanna Munro,
 May, 2016
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