I released Fluctuation on April 26, 2013. The design was influenced by the industrial shapes I saw daily in appliances and furniture—air conditioners, fans, and even the contours of chairs. I wanted to translate that sense of solid, dependable construction into a typeface. One recurring feature was a slight arc at the top of the lowercase n, which became a motif across much of the alphabet. Another was the cathedral arch used for the A, which created space in the heavier weights and was echoed in the V. The W proved more difficult; in Fluctuation it ended up resembling a wide U with an I in the middle, a compromise that came from testing how the arch form could be adapted.

The family launched complete, with multiple weights and italics. I designed the letterforms to feel both functional and stable, borrowing from the smooth curves and structural details of household products. The influence wasn’t limited to a few characters—those industrial arcs and softened geometries carried through much of the design, giving it a consistent feel.

Version 1.1, released on October 30, 2024, reorganized the weight names to improve clarity: Book became Light, Light was renamed Extra-Light, and Extra-Light became Thin. That was the only change; there were no prior updates and no alterations to the outlines. Fluctuation has always been distributed as a licensed family with no free weights offered. It has not seen significant use, but for me it was a study in how industrial product design can inform the proportions and curves of a typeface.