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. Withtongue 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 a Muoto monospaced extension. By following the same design space as for Muoto, Cortat pushes the limits of the monospaced genre through four width series: UltraCondensed, Condensed, Normal and Extended.
From this program, Muoto Mono family combines original and functional solutions into a coherent system so as to offer designers a typographic tool with greater potential for expression and a wider range of applications. Lastly, the definition
of widths emerges from a typographic and visual logic rather than one based on mathematics, and designers will be able to adjust the set weight thanks to the variable font format.