Courtney Tulloch

Jones Knowles Ritchie developed a brand identity for British gymnast Courtney Tulloch and asked me to handle the type design duties. Their brief was that they wanted a geometric sans serif inspired by Courtney’s physics defying movement on the rings. They wanted to then translate this typeface into animated, 3D shapes that were each made from a single tube. They had sketches for all of this, but needed someone to help with the traditional type design part. I jumped at the chance because this was a really unusual challenge.

I started by developing a solid foundation. Nothing too fancy, just a basic geometric sans with the tube structure in mind:

JKR decided that it would be useful to have a second traditional typeface that looked like a wireframe of the 3D version of the shapes. We went back and forth between the flat typeface and 3D models and ended up with this:

My part of the project was done, a few months went by AND THEN I got an email from the team at JKR asking me to take a look at how the animation was turning out. I stared at my screen in disbelief for 30 minutes watching the sample over and over and over. I mean, look at this:

JKR | Courtney Sans from Jones Knowles Ritchie on Vimeo.

And this:

In conclusion, I made a simple typeface. They made something unbelievably amazing.

JKR | Courtney Tulloch from Jones Knowles Ritchie on Vimeo.

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Commissioned Work