Dear amigos, today’s find is all about type. Inspired by a mix of traditional norwegian’s embroidery and 8-bit retro aesthetics, Hardanger is a pixel font designed by Agathe Millet.
The starting seed for the project was brief for Millet’s type class, which was to create a modular font. Coming back from a exchange semester in Oslo, Norway, she knew pretty quickly what she wanted to do for this project: a mix between technology and tradition, based on a pixel.
Millet: “This embroidery is very special because of it geometric aspect that I really love. As I said, the retro style was also a big part of the creation of Hardanger”.
Each character is based on a 7-pixel grid. This constraint led Agathe to find a compromise between legibility and aesthetics, in order to have letters that are understandable but in the maximalist world of embroidery. In the regular version, each intersection is “empty” to match with the Hardanger embroidery principle of full and empty embroidered squares. In Italic, the font looks more like a cursive and reinforces the traditional look.
Millet takes the pixel as the basis of her research: “I wanted it to be large to resemble 8-bit/retro style without falling too far into this category; it’s also this size that enabled me to create apertures in my letters to make them lighter and more delicate. I find it interesting to confront two seemingly opposing concepts to create a rich and complex design.”
She developed the 3 alternative versions, transforming the pixel into several patterns, always derived from embroidery.
Millet: “I do this job because I love creating visuals and helping people to have beautiful graphic media that meet their needs. I’ve had a passion for books and writing since I was a little girl; today, I write less, but I draw letters to write and lay out books, so it’s like coming full circle.”
Currently based in Montpellier, France, Agathe Millet is a graphic and type designer with a master’s degree in art direction (from ECV school in Bordeaux) and she has been working as a freelance graphic designer since the beginning of 2024.
Type design is a passion for Agathe, who enjoys designing custom typefaces for her customers: “I also love testing new things such as visuals compositions, between art and graphic design, by experimenting several materials, textures, layout etc”
When asked for advice for other designers, she insists: “Don’t be afraid to show off your work and, if you can, keep working on personal projects”
