Earlier this year, the Italian type foundry Reber R41 released R41 Stop, a revival I designed for them on commission. R41 Stop, of course, is based on Stop, the distinctive design released in 1971 by Nebiolo, designed by Aldo Novarese with help from others in the Nebiolo studio. This version that I designed for Reber R41 is specifically based on the version of Stop that they manufactured as dry transfer type. The design is fundamentally the same, but a careful digitization of the original glyphs reproduced for dry transfer reveals certain subtle differences in curvature. I wish I could discover more about the R41’s process for preparing artwork for reproduction — whether they prepared new stencils like Letraset, whether they photographed existing artwork, or some other method. Alas, the information seems lost.
In reviving a typeface that I love as much as I love Stop, I didn’t want to simple reproduce what had existed. I wanted to do that part of it well, but it was also very important to me to add more to the concept. I wanted to take Stop further, so I could feel like I truly earned some design credit that could sit alongside Novarese’s. I added additional symbols, support for Cyrillic and Greek, and a number of alternative character forms based on the ways that people have hacked Stop’s design over the years. In making a version Stop that was specifically derived from R41’s dry transfer product, I tried very hard to honor that material legacy, and design the new glyphs whenever possible to look like they could have been made out of existing shapes from the basic sheet by a decent designer with a scalpel and a steady hand.
You can see R41 Stop on the Bijou Type site, purchase a license from R41 or Type Network, or activate it with Adobe Fonts.