Caleb Bennett redesigned Condé Nast Traveler with a new typographic palette anchored by some beautiful typefaces. The palette also included Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed, a very weird, oddly drawn typeface from 1937. Several issues after the launch of the new design, Caleb decided that Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed wasn’t working. He wanted something that was like that, but way stranger. I looked at the original drawings and metal type version of Gill Sans and drew Caleb a new typeface loosely based on the original. Instead of trying to make something clean and perfect, I made it more strange, amplified drawing oddities, introduced layers of inconsistency and added a lot of flat out bizarre details and alternates. Caleb and his team used all of these parts in enumerable unexpected combinations to create a defining typographical feature of the magazine going forward.
Design Director: Caleb Bennett
