So he shelved the concept for Antenna-but he didn’t forget it. Detours like this occasionally happen when a design has to match a project or client’s specific requirements, and Highsmith felt perfectly fine about the change.
The project turned into Boomer Sans and Boomer Serif, a family with a rounder appearance that was eventually redubbed Salvo, also available as sans-serif and slab-serif companions. While developing Antenna for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) in collaboration with art director Courtney Murphy, Cyrus Highsmith took the project in a different direction and eventually ended up with Salvo, a rounder design with a more pronounced contrast.ĭuring its development, though, the design branched off, organically evolving in a different direction. Murphy expressed interest in the concept’s potential encouraged, Highsmith set out to create an integrated type system that would tie the design of AARP The Magazine to both AARP The Bulletin and the Spanish-language AARP Segunda Juventud, the nonprofit’s print magazines. Intrigued by the results, he shared his sketches with Courtney Murphy, then art director for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the US-based interest group dedicated to empowering Americans fifty and older.
By injecting squareness into his usual energetic curves, Highsmith managed to create lettershapes that were simultaneously calm and tense, energetic and balanced, with a deliberate rhythm that propelled words forward while keeping the text image grounded.
The core concept for Antenna began to germinate in the early aughts, as Cyrus Highsmith was experimenting with new sans-serif forms. Then it blossomed into a powerful pair of coordinated sans- and slab-serif families. ApInside the fonts: Antenna and Antenna Serif Stylistic SetsĬyrus Highsmith’s design took a little detour during its conception.