A Playful Font Created for the NYC Heritage Ball With Letters That Ingeniously Stretch and Retract

Heritage Ball

When design expert Natasha Jen of Pentagram was approached by the Heritage Ball to create the invitations for their annual gala, she and her team were determined to create something both symbolic of New York architecture and unusual in its format. The result was the ingenious blue and white dynamic font called Herita-Geo.

Expanding and contracting, the typography visually echoes the way buildings and structures adapt to fill available area, especially in cities and urban environments. The custom typeface, named Herita-Geo by the designers, is composed of letterforms that horizontally scale between regular and extended widths of the font, which are used all at once. The approach dynamically comes to life in animations where the letters squeeze in or stretch out as needed to fill the space. A double line was used to emphasize the architectural quality of the typeface, while the color blue references blueprint sheets.

Invitation

images via Pentagram

via Wired

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.