We need balls!

The Grosvenor Group is one of the world’s largest privately-owned property businesses. They develop, manage and invest in property in more than 60 cities around the world. Together with design agency Dragon Rouge, we extensively modified Pensum Display to make it fit their brand’s voice.

We wanted the Grosvenor typeface to have distinction and character, evoking letters cut into the stonework of grand buildings: Pensum Display’s sharp letterforms made it an ideal starting point. Introducing ball terminals brought a sense of heritage, but we made many other modifications to make Grosvenor distinct:

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The proportions of letters were changed to create a texture with less condensed, more round shapes. (Reduced the hight by 5%)

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We replaced sharp stroke endings with classically rounded terminals to create a sense of heritage.

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Lining figures. Pensum Display, a distillation of a text face, used oldstyle figures as the default, but Grosvenor draws on the traditions of monumental and architectural lettering.

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Although, with the t and f, the spikiness was increased and the crossbar got more sharp.

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We retained Pensum’s sharp junctions and serifs letters like n and kept Pensum’s distinctive a.

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Amongst other things, we gave the Q particular attention. At one point we made it a little too calm, but going back to the sharpness of the original design fixed that.

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Rethinking Pensum was a comprehensive task, but it also provided a solid foundation for creating a typeface that precisely matches Grosvenor’s voice and visual identity.

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Type Mates Fonts In Use Custimized Font Grosvenor Dragon Rouge 06 Pensum Display
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Further reading