When Mikael Kivelä, Head of Design at the Helsinki-based creative agency 358, was picking a typeface for the identity of his governmental client, he had a precise idea in mind: our Cera Pro could provide the perfect character for the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs of Finland, he’d just need to tweak some characters…
Inspired by the old signage of Helsinki’s Fazer Café the uppercase A was tweaked towards a truncated design.
And the Q and lowercase a were modified to give the typeface a more fitting, direct and practical voice.
Shortening the ascenders to match the already low cap height, and adjusting the diacritics, helped turn Cera Pro into a tool for making compact logos.
Working on the custom version, it turned out that the truncated A could be a starting point for modifying other letters, like M or k. But the wideness of the A’s top couldn’t affect the design of the other letters too much.
In the final version, we didn’t let the industrial become an indulgence. The peaked corners of Cera Pro have been truncated, and neither bland nor overwhelming Cera MFAF strikes a balance that mixes more conventional letters with the distinctive.
Image by courtesy of 358.
Image by courtesy of 358.