Grilli Type, the Swiss Type Foundry, founded in 2009 by Noël Leu and Thierry Blancpain, has recently been commissioned to design Pinterest Sans.
The goal of the custom font was to be used across all of Pinterest's branding touchpoints, as MadeThought, the British design studio, thoughtfully wanted to consolidate the brand's assets, tricky for a brand that’s all about visuals in every sense of the word.
To do so, the inspirational and quickly growing brand needed a recognizable look and distinguishing typeface to go along with it. The design director at Pinterest, Andreas Helin, stated, "There's something magical with what people can do with simple foundations. On Pinterest, visual inspiration acts as building blocks for the next thing in life. It's similar to how children use rudimentary shapes to imagine new worlds. We were curious how that intersection between geometric forms and human creativity might be captured within a typeface."
The internal Pinterest team wanted to explore the duality of handwritten types and geometric forms, resulting in a round, constructed typeface with slight flourishes on certain letters. They flushed out the details throughout the typeface thoroughly, resulting in a robust yet extremely friendly font, perfect for a website that can get described as such.
There are multiple versions of the font, respectively made for specific touchpoints. These include User Interface optimized and an italicized version that's a nod to the fact that the brand is forward-thinking, with users collecting visuals to inspire their future.
The result is a font that will carry the brand forward due to its contemporary details yet classic roots. The possibilities are endless both in the font and for the brand.
