New Release: The Arizona Type Specimen ☠️💀☠️💀☠️
We’re excited to release The Arizona Type Specimen today, a five color, split-page, spiral-bound showcase of ABC Arizona. Rounded corners make it suitable for both adults and children.
Designed by Elias Hanzer, ABC Arizona is the first ever sans-to-serif Variable Font that packages its five looks — Serif, Text, Mix, Flare, and Sans — into one single file. This new specimen, designed by studio Hanzer Liccini, mirrors Arizona’s countless combinations through its split structure. You can mix and match the half pages to discover the typeface’s vast system. Just like monster picture books for kids.
Illustrations
Illustrations by Paris-based Célestin Krier (a friend of Elias’s from UdK student days) are inspired by the mythical Chimera, a hybrid creature from Greek mythology composed of different animal parts. Think of a goat’s head, a lion’s body, and a snake’s tail.
Arizona Sans in green (PANTONE 7481U)
Arizona Flare in blackberry-purple (PANTONE 528U)
Arizona Serif in red (PANTONE 1788U)
Arizona Text in blue (PANTONE 2727U)
Arizona Mix in dark yellow (PANTONE 103U)
Production Details
It’s 290 x 230 mm, offset printed on 250g Arena White Smooth paper at Druckhaus Sportflieger in Berlin. Plus a 580g Arena White Smooth cover.
Essay
We commissioned type historian and researcher Ferdinand Ulrich to write “Tools and Shapes,” an essay that puts ABC Arizona in conversation with other sans to serif experiments from the past. Things like Otl Aicher’s Rotis. It runs through the publication five times, each time with a different layout, color, and Arizona sub-family.
About the Designers
Elias Hanzer is a Berlin-based type designer and graphic designer originally from Vienna, and Lucas Liccini is a Berlin-based graphic designer with a background in publishing. Together, they co-founded Hanzer Liccini in 2018. The partnerships specializes in custom typefaces and pay extra attention to production and print-specific details. It also manages its own platform for digital fonts, HAL Typefaces.
HAL studio, Berlin
Studio portrait by Elias’s brother Simon
HanLi foster a growing range of meme-like iterations of the HAL logo, which surface here and there
Always: Proofing in the subway
Never: Alone
Distribute Dinamo Editions?
The Arizona Type Specimen is the first book published by Dinamo Editions. It’s legit. ISBN included. Let’s give this one a home on your shelves already 🙃
And to all the book sellers out there: Would you like to stock it? Please get in touch with madeleine@abcdinamo.com. And look out for more titles dropping in the near future.