The circus—that’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw Pivot Grotesk. The typeface has weight and structure, yet it’s not still. Pivot Grotesk is a new release from the award-winning Swiss type studio Nouvelle Noire, going beyond the typical lineal shapes found in classic san-serifs to channel energetic, organic motion.
Designed by Anton Studer (Rektorat, Nouvelle Grotesk), two fundamental visual principles form Pivot Grotesk’s design logic: rays and spirals. Human movement evokes the first of these (radial movement, or lines diverging from a common center—legs walking, the hands of a clock, the stripes fanning out from the circus tent top). The second is the universe (logarithmic spirals, so common in nature, rule the rotation of planets around gravitational forces in the Milky Way).
As headlines, these two principles drive Pivot Grotesk’s visual impact, but the typeface also has legibility and subtle style for smaller uses. Pivot Grotesk is available in eight weights and two character sets, covering Latin and Baltic/Slavic languages (obviously, they’ve included some fun spiral glyphs).
The studio designed a version of Pivot Grotesk as a custom typeface for Theater Basel. The original, created as part of the new identity for the opera and ballet venue, has been refined for commercial release, living up to its full pirouetting potential.
Learn more and try Pivot Grotesk at nouvellenoire.ch.