Christian Schwartz has partnered with Paul Barnes to form Commercial Type, a new type foundry based in London and New York. Please click here to visit our site.
RETAIL FONTS
CUSTOM FONTS
Please note that, except where indicated, these typefaces are not available for licensing.

Publications:
Amplitude Classified Amplitude Headline Big Black Book Stencil Brunel Caponi Farnham Headline Houston Kaiser (NEW) Popular Corporate Design:
Bosch Deutsche Bahn Eero Empire State Building Harrison Munich Re Group Symantec
UNFINISHED EARLY WORK
ABOUT

   
2004-2005. Commissioned by Mark Porter at The Guardian. Designed with Paul Barnes. Available for licensing from Commercial Type.



Even judging by our limited number of press tests, The Guardian's new presses are the best quality presses I've ever worked with, but we still didn't think it would be wise to take too many chances with this face. The Sports section was an important part of the redesign, and the new Agate had to ensure that the rugby and football scores would be easier to read than ever, in spite of them being crammed onto smaller pages.



At 5.5 point, and even smaller in info graphics and maps, it needed ink traps, an enormous x-height, higher contrast, dropped crossbars on 'f' and 't', and exaggerated punctuation, but at the same time the proportions needed to be a lot narrower than the text Sans.



The Agate figures needed to be tabular, of course, including fractions on the same character width. We tried four or five different solutions on press, including broken fraction bars and no bar at all, and this one seemed to print and read the best. The fractions in the heaviest weight of the Agate were probably the most difficult bit of drawing in the whole project.

Roman and Bold weights with italics, small caps, and italic small caps, in 4 grades; Medium and Black with italics, small caps, and italic small caps. Bolds and Black are available in duplexed and non-duplexed versions. Please see the samples on the Commercial Type website for more information.





More about each part of the family:

Guardian Egyptian Guardian Sans Guardian Text Egyptian Guardian Text Sans Guardian Agate