A refreshingly uncomplicated, unique sans-serif? Let us introduce you to Rigby. While other typefaces outdo each other in terms of number of weights, widths, axes, and interesting features, Rigby by Pieter van Rosmalen will impress you mostly by the latter. It is a small series in two weights only, but with corresponding italics (obliques) and a monospaced sibling. The classic set is sometimes referred to as RIBBI – Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic. This makes using Rigby fantastically easy. All styles compliment each other for exactly the right distinction and emphasis.

Rigby started as a retail version of a custom typeface developed for NTR, a Dutch public broadcaster specializing in information, education and culture. The expressive logo by Studio Turner was to be accompanied by a performant but also warm and fitting typeface. While our NTR-fonts were sharp and rounded at the same time, van Rosmalen settled for all-sharp/angular terminals for Rigby but still kept personable letterforms like the unique lowercase g and e. If these are too flavourful for your use-case, just switch to the more toned-down alternatives via OpenType features: “normal” g, e with straight bar, and single-storey a. (You can also access these alternates individually via stylistic sets.) However, the personable feel of these default characters is what makes the monospaced family extra special.

Apart from the stylistic alternates, Rigby comes with a rich set of contextual alternates for better looks of certain letter combinations. Plenty of accented characters cover 40 Latin-based languages. Use it where ever your standard text-editor font is too boring but an expansive family with 80 styles would be too overwhelming.

Designer
Pieter van Rosmalen
2023–2025

Rigby supports the following languages
Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inari Sami, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Northern Sami, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Upper Sorbian, Vunjo, Walser, Welsh and Zulu.