Cera Pro’s circular o and geometric glyphs can give a wonderful sense of clarity to a contemporary branding project, but in tight text columns and the narrow reading environments of mobile devices, sometimes the typeface be a little too wide. After expanding the Cera Collection to include rounded, stencil, and handmade brush variants, we’d like to introduce Cera Condensed and Compact: true problem solvers for compressed spaces.

Cera Condensed — more than a slim fit

The most compressed style in the Cera Collection, Cera Condensed can be more than 30% more space-efficient than Cera Pro. Spacing has been tightened, characters have been refined and proportions have changed: the o and its round relatives have been slimmed down, Cera Pro’s circular o being giving way to a slightly square oval that’s nearly as narrow as the n.

The result is a super tight geometric sans that, carefully applied, can work in a narrow space, large or small, whether it’s a compact information leaflet or a compressed headline.

Cera Compact — space-saving but not condensed

Narrow but not obviously condensed, Cera Compact is made for more efficiency in copy text. More conventionally spaced than Cera Condensed, it is also more flexible for headlines and text, ensuring copy takes up less space without necessarily being less readable. When Cera Pro is a little too wide, you need Cera Compact.

New possibilities in horizontal space

Consistent with the Cera Collection’s emphasis on circularity, Cera Condensed’s o keeps a rounded form and this oval shape makes it possible to interpolate Cera on the width axis. Besides these two new widths, we can also interpolate any useful intermediate width. Need something a little wider than Condensed, but not as wide as Compact? We can find it for you — variable design space here we come!

If you are interested in an experimental variable font, or static fonts in-between the spectrum of normal and condensed width, just give us a hej@typemates.

Like all TypeMates fonts, Cera Condensed and Compact are available print+web, embedding and server licensing. Each width is offered as a separate family, but you can combine all three — normal, compact and condensed — for just the price of two. A great deal of flexibility for designers to use Cera across all touchpoints.

Plus, you can test all the styles for free on your desktop: