Augure, designed by Simon Renaud, is based on an a priori paradoxical principal: how to move beyond traditional letterforms without undermining legibility? To this end, this typeface questions the canons inherited from Roman capitals and Carolingian minuscules.

Augure freely reflects a range of diverse influences: somewhere between historical forms of the Latin alphabet (including Uncials), forms taken from cryptography, and forms inspired by digital technology and its rationality. The combinations of elementary forms are reminiscent of early twentieth-century experiments with geometric sans serifs. The juxtaposition of these many borrowed elements provides the typeface with a formal singularity, generating captivating typographic compositions.

Though Augure is also available in a variable font format (weight and slant), the typeface has seven different weights by default (from Thin to Black). The user can thus activate one of the three stylistic sets (classic, eclectic, cryptic) or separately select one of the numerous alternate glyphs contained in the typeface’s extended palette.

Molitor, designed by Matthieu Cortat in 2019, is a modernist yet joyous typeface; a dive into an Art Deco pool, named after the eponymous and emblematic building in Paris. Theatrical and spectacular, Molitor recalls an adventurous, fresh and optimistic modernism, an iridescent wave on the chlorine surface of an olympic pool.

A lineal with barely contrasted and slightly flared lines, Molitor features 12 styles separated into two optical sizes: Text and Display. Each optical size has a roman and an italic in Light, Regular and Bold. In the text version, the proportions of the capitals obey the canons of the imperial roman capital, reinterpreted in the manner of the modernist stone-cut inscriptions of the 1920s and 1930s. The lowercase letters have a traditional structure with a short x-height. In its display version, the proportions of Molitor are exacerbated, approaching the dramatic spontaneity
of French Art Deco.

While the straight and oblique lines only extend in height, the round shapes expand in all directions. With a design different from the wider and much more playful regular, the italic of the Molitor is quite typical. Despite its sharp 16° slant, it retains rigorously circular round shapes. Finally, as Art Deco gave the general public access to the “geometric avant-garde”, Molitor allows users to define their own size and style thanks to variable font technology.

Muoto is an extended type family, begun as a collaboration between Matthieu Cortat and the agency Base Design (Anthony Franklin and Sander Vermeulen). Published in 2021, Muoto has now been completed with three new set widths: Ultra Condensed, Condensed, and Extended.
Muoto is the synthesis of a sensitive and human approach to modernist design. This variable sans serif font combines full curves and solid stems, showing that functionalism can actually be warm and softly effective.
With its robust structure and subdued proportions, it evokes organic forms dear to Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who in 1957 wrote: “we should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.”

Muoto embodies this idea while simultaneously responding to contemporary typographic standards with its range of weights (from Thin to Black) and now its four set widths (from Ultra Condensed to Extended), and everything is fully variable!

In 2009, when GVA Studio joined the Base group, it marked the Swiss studio’s entry into a network of international scope. With tongue firmly in cheek, Base Geneva designed a site to generate posters that played with stereotypes of Swiss style. Basetica “a Helvetica for the 2010s” was designed in this context, commissioned from Matthieu Cortat and distributed by 205TF a few years later.
In 2021, Base Design wished to redefine their typographic identity, and so the studio once again invited Matthieu Cortat to collaborate on a typeface to succeed Basetica.

What came next was a story of debates and questions, of micro-modifications and radical decisions, of discussions and rich debates.

In 2022, Matthieu Cortat began working on an extension for Muoto so as to offer designers a typographic tool with greater potential for expression and a wider range of applications. The Extended and Condensed styles resize letters to 20% of the standard proportions, while the Ultra Condensed design is even more radical as it assigns a single set width to the counterforms, regardless of weight. This “irregularity” in the definition of widths emerges from a typographic and visual logic rather than one based on mathematics, and allows designers to adjust both the set width and weight thanks to the variable font format.