The well-known Chateau Marmont in LA impressed a typeface
Chateau Marmont is part of Hollywood legend. It is visited by celebrities such as F Scott Fitzgerald to Dorothy Parker, Courtney Love to Quentin Tarantino and has also appeared in several films and works of literature. It's also notorious for the death of John Belusi, who died of a drug overdose in Bungalow 3. and Helm Newton, who was killed in a car accident and left the hotel driveway.
After visiting the legendary hotel in 2019, the founders of Astrae Studio decided to pay homage to its logo and merchandise – set in Libra, a typeface designed by SH de Roos in 1938. Although the couple loved the 92-year-old because of the hotel's “Gothic glamor” and “ice-cubed urinals”, they didn't expect to fall in love with his typography. When they were back in their hometown of Copenhagen, they set out to create an updated version of Libra.
The original font was inspired by pre-Carolingian special letters dating back more than a thousand years explaining the vaguely medieval look of the design. Astrae wanted to create a version of Libra that was more contemporary and versatile. The original mixed uppercase and lowercase letters and also used a hard-to-recognize "d" that was more like an "o" or some other medieval symbol.
"Libra is very unstructured in its design," the founders Carl-Emil Storm Gabrielsen and Jesper Uttrup told CR. “The curves, serifs and the thickness of the letters vary a lot. This is definitely what makes the font charming, but in many cases these quirks make it difficult to use – especially for longer texts. So we've done our best to strike a balance between keeping some oddities and creating a streamlined font. "
The castle took about six months to complete. Gabrielsen and Uttrup described the project as a reminder of sunnier times before the lockdown at the LA hotel. He says the studio hopes to partner with Chateau Marmont on their wares at some point in the future.
Chateau is available for € 13. astrae.studio/chateau