A notoriously chunky genre gets a breath of fresh air with the newest member of Mark Caneso’s Hoss Round family. Late last year, Hoss Round Slab joined its grotesk siblings, bringing the presence of a traditional block serif and a little softness baked in.
To create the slab version, Caneso didn’t just slap serifs onto Hoss Round. While that might have worked in the lighter styles, he says for the heavier styles, “I had to rethink how the mass was distributed.” So, he had to completely redraw every form.
Caneso explained his process for the updates:
Fresh Eyes: “With a few years between this new version and the original, I made some thoughtful modifications with a fresh eyes approach to the character set.”
Visual Requirements: “I added serifs to the mix, which meant rethinking how the mass was distributed, especially in the heaviest weights.” You can see this play out in the vertical strokes of the uppercase Ultra-weight letterforms, the reduction of the crossbars (to accommodate the serifs) in the A and H, and additional fine-tuning of the C, G, and S.
Technical Difficulties: “To make the font work in variable font format many characters needed some production tweaks to make them compatible across the full weight spectrum.”
Unnecessary Alterations: I always give myself the freedom to deviate from my original ideas if an opportunity presents itself.
As for how Caneso sees Hoss Round Slab’s potential uses, he says that the original Hoss Round family has been used in everything from music festival branding to the packaging of ‘adult’ toys.
I try not to get too caught up in how I think a font should be used. The best part of releasing a typeface into the world is not being able to control how others use it.
Mark Caneso
Hoss Round Slab is available in 14 styles (seven weights and italics), with 850 glyphs, supporting more languages than the original family (200+ Latin-based languages, including Vietnamese) and additional numerals sets.
PSTL is the type arm of Caneso’s design practice, pprwrk studio, a hub for original retail fonts and experimenting with letterforms for custom client work. Caneso has graced PRINT’s Type Tuesday column with typefaces such as Decoy (2021), Snug (2023), Panel (2023), and Skew (2024).
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