The strong, silent type(face)

There’s a funny threshold when it comes to fonts. There are countless options in our digital landscape, yet a handful of them cross a tipping point where they become a household name to the common folk. Usually there’s some polarizing reason for the recognition – they’re well-known because people make fun of them (“Comic Sans”), or because they’re default on your word processors of choice (“Arial”), or because it hit a cultish hipster phenomenon (“Helvetica”).

“Inter” hasn’t reached that level quite yet, and I’d argue it should, but, actually it shouldn’t.

It was developed by Figma’s Rasmus Andersson, who wrote “the idea of Inter is to design and craft a workhorse of a typeface that is accessible to everyone in the world.” In recent years it’s been my go-to font of choice for so many design applications. It checks so many boxes in the positive category, it’s legible, accessible, ideal for screens & digital environments, it’s a variable font (meaning there’s a sliding scale of weights, not just “regular” and “bold”), and it’s an open license so it’s free to use. 

It’s popular in the design community for these reasons, as well as some even more nerdy features. There’s a huge character set so it can adhere to many different languages, and makes optical alignment adjustments to optimize readability in any setting. The 'workhorse' parlance is no joke; it was specifically engineered to solve the tiniest of by-the-pixel problems. In design circles, there is often talk about the ideal of a 'transparent typeface,’ one that is so functional that the reader doesn't even realize they are looking at a font. It’s a delivery system for information, not a distraction. Inter is the gold standard of this transparency. 

I prefer Inter for all of the above reasons, but most importantly, I like that it’s not a thing. It’s not gimmicky, there isn’t a real cultish fandom surrounding it, there’s no SNL skit, and it hasn’t gotten thrusted into the tornado that is American politics. It’s so unremarkably good that it won’t get the acclaim it deserves. It’s the NBA glue guy who won’t see jersey sales but is well-respected by the basketball community, or that one character actor whose goal is to let the A-lister shine. 

I suppose in a way I’m contradicting myself by writing this to begin with, but my goal here isn’t to glorify the font itself, rather to shout out all the silent workhorses out there. And there’s a lot of ‘em! In the weeds, finding solutions to things before they even turn into issues, putting in the time for testing, and more testing, trying things in pursuit of putting the best product out there. Quite simply, putting in “the work,” the work that most commonly goes completely unnoticed and unrecognized. I’ve found Inter to be a nice manifestation of this principle.

This all often comes at the expense of all kinds of distinguished acknowledgement like awards, social media engagement, street cred. It’s increasingly more difficult to ‘make it’ in any creative field for a plethora of reasons that you’ve probably read about endlessly over the past few years. The workhorse mindset mostly got replaced by shortcuts, stunty flash-in-the-pan moments, and branch-swinging around endless social media tropes. Designers now feel the need to do things like film themselves & their process on Reels, but not before a selfie shot of them pointing up at an on-screen prompt to let you know 'I’m a real person, and I’m going to show you how I do this thing.' This is the pivot from practice to performance. We’ve stopped obsessing over the integrity of the output and started obsessing over the theater of the process. Where’s the [Tony Soprano voice] strong, silent Gary Cooper type that doesn’t need to grandstand, and instead, owns a body of work that speaks for itself? 

I wouldn’t necessarily call former NFL quarterback Cam Newton the 'strong, silent type,' but stay with me on this one: he was once asked if he’d trade his 2015 MVP award for a single Super Bowl ring. He firmly said no. While that’s heresy to most sports fans, his reasoning is what resonates here.

To Newton, the MVP represented the totality of his work, the proof that he had mastered his craft over a sustained period. A championship can be won by a few lucky plays or a special teams misstep; an MVP is earned in the thousands of unrecorded hours of practice. He chose the integrity of his impact over the jewelry of the result.

In Andersson’s case with Inter, the same logic applies. Developing a tool that solves problems for the entire internet is the 'MVP' move. It’s the commitment to the long-haul craft, choosing to be the invisible infrastructure of the web rather than a 'cult classic' font that wins a few awards but disappears in five years.

When asked about the popularity of the font, he responded “I haven't done any marketing at all around this. Sometimes I'll hear about something from somebody that's been using it for a while. I'm like, "Wait, what? I had no idea, that's really cool." Andersson’s surprise at his own success feels like the ultimate 'mic drop' for the quiet creator. It suggests that if you focus entirely on the utility, the notoriety becomes a mere byproduct rather than the point. We should all be so lucky to create something so 'transparent' that people forget it was even designed. To be the NBA glue guy, the character actor, the dependable font. To choose the impact over the glory, and let the work speak for itself, even if it’s just whispering.