GGX89

I released GGX89 on January 8, 2022 as a display-oriented offshoot of GGX88. Where GGX88 was drawn for functional use in user interfaces, GGX89 was built for headings and large-scale settings. The design came directly from Coolvetica: when I expanded that family, I created alternate versions of some of its more unconventional letters, such as the curly lowercase t. Those alternates were dropped from the final Coolvetica build, but I repurposed them into GGX89. Apart from those substitutions, the outlines are virtually identical to Coolvetica.

The family followed Coolvetica’s structure exactly, with the same range of weights and widths, and was distributed through the usual commercial channels. Unlike GGX88, which was engineered for television screens, GGX89 featured extremely tight spacing and kerning to maximize impact in large sizes. That same feature makes it unsuitable for body text, but effective for display use where compact spacing can add tension and energy.

On November 1, 2024, version 1.1 reorganized the weight names to match the conventions used in my other families: Book became Light, Light was renamed Extra-Light, Extra-Light became Thin, and Ultra-Light was labeled Hairline. The update also changed the naming order to weight-before-width, so a style like Condensed Bold became Bold Condensed in menus. GGX89 has never had free versions and I haven’t seen it in notable use, but it remains available as a commercially licensed option for designers who want a stricter, more conventional alternative to Coolvetica.