Sinzano

I released Sinzano on July 29, 2005, as one of my first experiments with OpenType’s capacity for contextual alternates. I wanted to capture the look of interlocking lettering that appeared on 1960s and 1970s jazz and lounge album covers. The designs I studied seemed to be hand-lettered, since I never found a phototype font that matched them. Sinzano was built to automate that style, using digital methods to generate the same dense interlocks that used to require manual composition.

The initial release was a single design, but on November 3, 2011, I expanded the family with Sinzano Sans and Sinzano Display. The Sans version dropped the flared serifs, while Display was added under contract, even though I would have preferred to release it separately with its own identity. Despite that, all three ended up grouped under the same family.

On June 18, 2021, I updated Sinzano, removing obsolete characters and precomposed fractions, trimming mathematical symbols, and reducing the file size. The typeface was well received when it launched and sold strongly. It later appeared on King’s Crown organic tea packaging in the 2020s and on the 2013 Vestbo Trio album No Need for Words. From the beginning, Sinzano has been a paid typeface.