Umber Magazine, an Oakland, California-based printed publication that focuses on creative culture and visual arts from the perspective of black & brown people, commissioned Vocal to create a bespoke font family for issue 3.
In every release, the content is curated around a theme with an inspiring group of contributors from across the globe. The theme for issue 3 was sound. In 2019, for this issue, Vocal crafted a typeface based on remnants from the first black-owned record label, Broome Special Phonograph Records.
However, once the sans serif was finished, we felt the issue needed more than just another sans serif. So, we decided to create a larger font family by taking the original sans serif and break it down into sound waves. ¶ This concept would allow the designers at Umber to create more dynamic compositions and more compelling titles and emphasize specific words within a quote. ¶
A view of all 5 weights of Broome Sound overlaid on top of each other.
