Marking the centennial of Paul Renner’s seminal typeface Futura, Bauer Types commissioned TypeTogether to create numerous script extensions, carrying over the principles of geometric simplicity, rationality and Modernism to more than 25 scripts around the world.

Our focus was the Myanmar script, enabling a total of 15 languages (Arakanese, Asho, Burmese, Danau, Eastern Pwo, Intha, Jingpho, Moken, Mon, Palaung, Pa’O, S’gaw, Shan, Tavoyan and Western Pwo) in six weights.

Futura’s Latin letters exhibit a dynamic mix of widths: lowercase letters like /h/ /m/ /n/ and /u/ are rather narrow compared to other letters like /a/ /d/ /e/ and /o/. To transpose this idea into Myanmar, we found the most natural places to vary the width were not in the base consonants but in letters like ◌ျ and ◌ါ where the narrow forms add a bit of vitality to the rhythm.

We also wanted to echo some of the Latin’s diagonal moments with crisp corners, which found appropriate homes in the ဒ, န, and ဇ.

Futura’s Latin has mixed treatment of terminals. Some letters (c, f) have vertical endings, others have diagonal (e, s) and still others vary between the weights. Experimenting with different approaches showed us that diagonal terminals gave a paragraphs a rather restless feeling, while mixing the terminals broke the rotation/reflection structure of Myanmar letterforms. Instead we opted for flat terminals throughout, prioritising a smooth reading texture and unity of form.

Futura100 Myanmar can be licensed through TypeTogether.