Pilar

Yury Ostromentsky: In 2012, I worked as art director at the Bolshoy Gorod magazine (BigCity). The protest movement after the State Duma elections was in its full swing. What was happening in the streets was somehow reminiscent of Spain during the Civil War — and screamed for relevant graphics. And so I designed a typeface for our ‘yellow covers’ which are still remembered — a loud one, but not very rude or outspoken, but rather variable at the same time. It turned out to be the romance of the Orwellian-Hemingwayish sort. 

In 2015, we took out the files, considerably extended the glyph set, partially redesigned outlines and named the typeface after Hemingway’s Pilar. Now, the typeface comes with four stylistic sets, four sets of alphabet symbols and figures: one default and three alternates. We called those Regular open, Wide closed, Narrow and Wild. In the 1930s, Spanish graphics served not only politics — those typefaces were also used to set ads. The same happened here: we got back to Pilar to make it more versatile.