Store Norske Arkitekt - Type family inspired by Norwegian functionalist architecture, drawing on building signage and historical alphabets.

Restaurant Skansen in Oslo, designed by Lars Backer (1927). Photograph: Mittet & Co / Oslo Museum.

About

Store Norske Arkitekt is a geometric typeface inspired by Norwegian functionalist architecture, drawing on the shapes of its buildings and the lettering found on them. The first functionalist building in the Nordic countries was Restaurant Skansen in Oslo, designed by Lars Backer (1927). Around the same time, Trygve M. Davidsen developed a geometric lettering alphabet, later published in Typografisk Skissering (1933). Other examples include Per Grieg’s lettering on Bergens Sjøfartsmuseum (1927) and Davidsen’s for Møre Landbruksselskaps Jubileumsutstilling (1931).

The functionalists wanted their design to be guided by practical considerations, aiming to exclude anything visually redundant. They believed in pure forms and that form should follow function. Rather than a style, functionalism was meant to be a method. Yet, despite this intent, many buildings shared common, redundant features: simple geometric elements that were easy to imitate, even without understanding their purpose. At the time, these superficial imitations were referred to as Funkis.

It appears that the most successful functionalist buildings were designed by architects trained in neoclassical architecture. With a more established sense of function and a deeper understanding of proportion and rhythm, these architects could solve complex problems with simple forms. They often included unusual features, adding spirit and vibrancy to their buildings.

Store Norske Arkitekt was developed within the functionalist visual language, while remaining rooted in the typographic knowledge that came before it. Its forms are shaped by the same concerns that gave the best functionalist buildings their force: clarity, proportion, rhythm, and practical reasoning. This gives the typeface a natural place in identities, signage, exhibitions, publications, and institutional communication connected to architecture, public space, and cultural life.

Notable Norwegian functionalist buildings include Ekebergrestauranten (Lars Backer, 1929), Kunstnernes Hus (Gudolf Blakstad, 1930), Hvalstrand Bad (André E. Peters, 1934), and Kalmarhuset (Leif Grung, 1936). Other architects of the era include Arne Korsmo, Sverre Aasland, Herman Munthe-Kaas, and Eindride Slaatto.

See also SN Tango for a more playful geometric typeface.

The Store Norske Arkitekt Typeface font is designed by Arve Båtevik

Store Norske Arkitekt is designed by Arve Båtevik.

Technical information

For full technical specifications and character overview, please see the technical section at the end of the specimen PDF.

Language support

Arkitekt supports a broad Latin character set covering Western European, Central European, South European, North European, Baltic, Turkish, Celtic, South-Eastern European, Nordic and Sami language use.

Supported languages include Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bemba, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inari Sami, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lule Sami, Luxembourgeois, Maltese, Northern Sami, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Scottish, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Southern Sami, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish and Welsh.

Character sets and encodings

Arkitekt supports Adobe Latin 1, Adobe Latin 2, Macintosh Roman, Macintosh Central European, Macintosh Croatian, Macintosh Icelandic, Macintosh Romanian, Macintosh Turkish, ISO/IEC 8859-1, 8859-2, 8859-3, 8859-4, 8859-9, 8859-10, 8859-13, 8859-14, 8859-15, 8859-16, Windows-1250, Windows-1252, Windows-1254 and Windows-1257.

OpenType features

Arkitekt includes OpenType features for access to alternates, glyph composition and decomposition, localised forms, subscripts, scientific inferiors, superscripts, numerators, denominators, fractions, ordinals, proportional figures, tabular figures, standard ligatures, discretionary ligatures and case-sensitive forms.

The font software has eight stylistic sets: ss01 for alternate lowercase a forms, ss02 for alternate uppercase G forms, ss03–ss07 for figure alternates and ss08 for alternate percent and per mille forms.

Feature tags: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, pnum, tnum, liga, dlig, case, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08.