Risotto collects 400 joyful risograph postcards into a newspaper

This week we launched our new brand typeface – meet NC HEADLINE!

Typography has always been a big part of Newspaper Club's visual identity, drawing on the character of classic newspaper front pages. But as the business has grown and we’ve started using type in more varied ways (like billboards!) we realised we needed a font with more flexibility.

Around the same time, our longtime collaborators at design studio D8 were launching a new type foundry, abcD8 – and we jumped at the chance to develop this with them.

NC Headline type specimen, printed on our tabloid newspapers.

Together we explored historic print archives – including the wonderful St. Bride Foundation in London – looking at everything from sophisticated broadsheet mastheads to brash 'red top' tabloid headlines. The way vintage show posters handled text ended up having an impact on the design, too.

Some of the posters and historic text we referenced while developing NC HEADLINE.

These references helped us shape our design, adding more personality along the way, until we landed on an all-caps typeface that feels distinctly Newspaper Club. It's made with variable font technology, meaning it can expand and contract to adapt to different uses across our website, social media, videos, printed samples and more.

To celebrate the launch, we made a short film about how NC HEADLINE came to life with a glimpse into our collaboration with abcD8. Watch it below!

And of course, we had to print a type specimen on our tabloids to show the new font in action. Our go-to designer, Euan Gallacher from D8, designed a specimen that put NC HEADLINE to the test – stretching it, condensing it and seeing just how big an ampersand can get in the form of a pull-out poster.

You can read more about how the typeface came together over at Creative Boom. And we'll be bringing the specimen along to events this year, starting with Birmingham Design Festival, if you want to get your hands on a copy!