I released Ugocranis on April 14, 2011 as an all-caps display typeface. It was my way of interpreting brutalism in typographic form. Rather than referencing a specific building, I abstracted the qualities I associated with the style—stark geometry, uncompromising forms, and a sense of weight. The result was a compact, angular design built around octagonal letterforms.

The name Ugocranis had no specific meaning; I chose it because it sounded heavy and somber, which fit the tone I wanted. From the start, it was a commercial release and was never offered for free. Ugocranis was always meant for display use and hasn’t been tied to notable projects.

On June 18, 2021, I issued a technical update. Deprecated characters were removed, reversed quotes were corrected, and the OpenType fractions feature was improved to support longer numerators and denominators. These changes didn’t alter the look of the typeface but brought it in line with current standards.