Mortar Logotype and Typeface Design
Identity, Typeface design
Identity, Typeface design
Design a logotype for Mortar, an artisan bakery and flour mill. Key values to project included warmth, tradition, and modernity.
Afterward, the logotype was expanded into a standalone bodyweight typeface that was targeted toward digital recipe sites.
The audience for the logotype included middle to upper-class millennials and gen x citygoers. This audience has an appreciation for a hip spot for a light bite and enjoys supporting small businesses. Regular customers of Mortar’s artisan flour include other bakeries in the area as well as upper-class individuals that are time-affluent and appreciate luxury baking ingredients.
For the typeface expansion, letterforms were optimized for digital legibility from a distance at small sizes, assuming they would be read on a mobile device while the reader was preparing food.
The typeface expansion has not yet been expanded to all Latin glyphs and the project timeline did not account for kerning.
Mortar’s logotype and regular weight take influence from Arabic calligraphic models, the origin place of bread. These models have a much more horizontal stress in their strokes with the writing utensil held at 60° rather than 45°. The sharp angles and overstated beaks of Mortar show the influence of the hand and reference traditional values. Also displayed is a strong horizontal movement at the baseline that takes influence from Arabic characters without explicitly referencing them.
Logotype features
Part of a type specimen developed for Mortar Regular.
Type specimen brochure that unfolds to an 11x17" poster
Type specimen brochure unfolded to poster
