TT Neoris is now available on our online store! Hurry up to purchase the future of Neo-Grotesques. View typeface

We Have a Digital Font Catalog! Looking through our typefaces has become even more convenient. PDF Catalog of TypeType Fonts

Use font subscription! The full font library of 75+ fonts will always be at hand. See more

Type foundryBlogTT Autonomous creation story

TT Autonomous creation story

Today we want to share with you the short story of the TT Autonomous font creation. We’ll tell you what inspired the designers and what types of fonts are included in the family.

TT Autonomous creation story

How the idea came about

The idea was born in Amsterdam when one of our colleagues took the official electric taxi at the Schiphol airport. At the moment we were thinking about creating a new wide sans-serif, and an interesting question emerged during the trip: what font would be associated with autonomous electric transport. Then we thought it would also be nice to expand this theme visually.

This is how the font family TT Autonomous came about. It is a modern brutal technological sans-serif. The basic visual characteristic of the typeface is the noticeable squareness of the characters and angular internal space. In addition, the typeface proportions tend to appear monospaced, but they are not really monospaced. The width of the characters is inspired by automobile logotype proportions, which are mostly rather wide.

Monospaced fonts

When we were planning the project and just starting to work on it, we didn’t think about a monospaced subfamily at all. The idea to create a separate monospaced subfamily appeared already in the process of working on the first sketches of the font, and later while working on the first vector characters.

TT Autonomous creation story

During one of our regular team meetings, one of our colleagues noticed that the shape of some characters in the main font had clear references to monospaced fonts. It seemed quite logical to us to develop this idea fully and create a separate monospaced subfamily.

Due to the fusion of unusual visual solutions inherited from the main family, and the characteristics typical for monospaced fonts, the monospaced subfamily turned out to be non-traditional and original.

And therefore, starting to create their oblique versions, we immediately decided not to stop there and tried to combine them with something completely opposite in style — and that’s how the characteristic monospaced true italic was born.

Outlined fonts

In addition, we created a couple of outline styles which are great for use in titles and large inscriptions and perfectly match the basic family and the monospaced family. As opposed to outlines that can be created in graphic editors, in TT Autonomous Outline we worked through the narrow and questionable spots, thanks to which the font looks professionally complete and harmonious.

TT Autonomous creation story

Variable fonts

As from the very beginning, the font was developed with tomorrow’s technologies in mind, we could not miss addressing variability and creating a variable font. TT Autonomous has variable versions for both the basic and the monospaced subfamilies.

TT Autonomous in numbers

TT Autonomous is a complex font family that consists of 25 fonts intended to solve a broad range of design tasks. Overall, the font family features 14 regular styles, 6 monospaced styles, 2 outline styles and 3 variable fonts. The number of glyphs varies from 630+ in the monospaced font to 790+ in the basic styles. The basic subfamily has alternates, ligatures, old-style figures, slashed zeroes, and many other useful features. The font is available in over 180 languages.

If you want to try TT Autonomous in your projects, we will gladly send you a trial version. Just fill out the request form.

Latest publications

Font’s Hidden Capabilities

Font’s Hidden Capabilities

Fonts feature numerous hidden capabilities. However, many designers either don’t know they exist or don’t understand how to use them. In this article, we will explore the topic of OpenType features: what they are, what they can do, and how to use them.

See more
UniversiTTy: Lesson 6. Designing Basic Latin Characters. Introduction

UniversiTTy: Lesson 6. Designing Basic Latin Characters. Introduction

It’s time to continue our fascinating journey into the multi-dimensional topic of font design! The following article is dedicated to the first stage of designing basic Latin characters: glyph construction and determining the graphic features, proportions, and consistency.

See more
Best newsletter fonts for emails: How to choose and use them correctly

Best newsletter fonts for emails: How to choose and use them correctly

How do you choose the best fonts for newsletters to take the quality of your emails to a new level? This article contains various recommendations from professional font designers to marketing specialists on choosing the types, formats, and sizes of newsletter fonts.

See more

See more

Changing glyph sizes in TT Commons™ Classic

Changing glyph sizes in TT Commons™ Classic

PluralSight has asked TypeType for trial versions of the TT Commons™ Classic and TT Interphases fonts to choose a suitable one. They were attracted by TT Commons™ Classic, but the non-standard size of glyphs made the font unsuitable for several directions.

See more
Font hinting: From first developments to use in practice

Font hinting: From first developments to use in practice

In this article, we will tell you the history of font hinting development. We will share our own experience of working with fonts and explain what tasks hinting solves.

See more
Turning off ligatures in TT Norms® Pro

Turning off ligatures in TT Norms® Pro

The German marketing analytics platform Adjust has addressed TypeType with a request to customize the TT Norms® Pro font. Adjust provides services for company development all around the world.

See more