“The Google Fonts library is a good vantage point for observing both the comedy and the tragedy of digital fonts as they are today.” - Frank Adebiaye
Contemporary design has once again forgotten that a universal standard can never be truly universal. What are we to do with the designers who don’t fit the mold of the Western modernist style? When our work isn’t perfectly legible in every context, perfectly applicable to every word and every character, why do we consider this work inferior? Why should the value of a design piece be judged based on its utility as a commodity?
Monsterrat addresses these questions with an “monsterized” remix of the Google font Montserrat. Its parent, despite its quality as an accessible free typeface, has fallen into obsolescence after being used in every urban renewal campaign and silicon-valley pitch deck since 2014. Its fall will hail another wave of near-identical regurgitations, fodder for the endless linear consumption of corporate design.
“MONSTER” in the Monsterrat typeface.
<aside> 👹 Monsterrat liberates Montserrat from the bounds of universality and commodification.
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Where Montserrat is thin, prim, geometric, uniform, regimented, legible, minimal, and functional, Monsterrat is fat, inconsistent, organic, chaotic, illegible, maximalist and purely aesthetic. Where Montserrat favors even axes and zero serifs, Monsterrat boasts extreme contrast and bloated terminals. Montserrat sits neatly on the page, while Monsterrat’s orgy of ligatures entwines each word in a tangle of slime. Montserrat is sterile; Monsterrat has horns and tails.
“Ugliness is valid, even refreshing, when it is key to an indigenous language representing alternative ideas and cultures.” - Steven Heller
For the designers who consider all “alternatives” to the Western standard “ugly,” a renaissance of design is approaching. The design world should get ready for a hell of a lot more “ugliness.” Canva default typefaces are temporary. This monster is forever.
