Chalet

Ilya Ruderman: The graphic idea behind Chalet typeface is historic templates. That’s London, Paris, New York of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. All those are geometric sans serifs. But they are geometric in different ways. 

The funny thing is that authors of this typeface, Ken Barber and Andy Cruz from House Industries, came up with a whole legend for this font: as if it was used in advertising campaigns of a long forgotten Swiss clothing designer, René Albert Chalet. Nobody paid attention to the fact that ‘chalet’ is a Swiss cottage, that is ‘house’, and many magazines bought this designer story. 

The typeface reflects three most active development periods of both neutral and geometric sans serif typefaces. The 1960s, when Helvetica was highly popular; the 1970s, with bright Modernist solutions; 1980s, arrival of Avant Garde Gothic by Herb Lubalin. All those styles had been reflected in our culture as well (even if with a slight delay), so it was quite easy to translate all this into Cyrillic language. Quick, simple, pleasant job.