I released Vanchrome on May 23, 2017. The design was built as an all-caps chromatic system inspired by Compacta, combined with the airbrushed chrome lettering I remembered from vans and posters in the 1970s and 1980s. My goal was to recreate that layered, metallic effect in a digital type family while keeping the geometry precise.

The system consists of ten layers. The Back layer is meant to be followed by the Front layer, while the remaining layers can be combined in any order. An optional Sparkle layer can be added last to simulate highlights. Achieving the embossed bezel effect required strict rules: interior spaces, such as the counter of an O or the gap between the legs of an H, were drawn to be exactly twice the width of the bezel.

From the beginning, Vanchrome was a display typeface and was never intended for text. It was released with a free commercial-use desktop license and remained unchanged until April 2024, when I placed it in the public domain. The design hasn’t appeared in notable projects but remains one of my most complex experiments in chromatic type construction.