How Studio Drama created Pencil Gothic: a custom typeface for D&AD

In 2025, Studio Drama created a custom display typeface inspired by our iconic D&AD Pencil, blending sharp geometry and legacy cues with bold, designer-first functionality. Here, we ask Lead Type Designer Diego Aravena about the inspiration, typographic choices and design process behind the font.

Tell us about Pencil Gothic and what inspired this custom typeface.

Pencil Gothic was a joy to make. D&AD’s recent identity has been built around Franklin Gothic, a true grotesque. Rather than reinventing it, we went back to its roots to understand why it works so well. Its simplicity, its confidence, its quiet beauty. That became our starting point. If you want to move a brand forward, you need to understand what made it iconic in the first place.

Were there any specific themes, moods, or concepts you aimed to convey in this typeface?

D&AD is instantly recognisable. Conceptually, it stands for excellence in commercial creativity and for raising the bar, year after year. Tangibly, the pencil and the logo are iconic. Pencil Gothic needed to hold that weight. Strong, assured, but never clumsy. Truly recognisable.

A key question for us was: could we build enough into Pencil Gothic for it to feel inherently D&AD, even when the logo wasn’t present? Could the typeface itself carry the brand’s authority, craft, and energy?

Running through the wider identity was the idea of being “drawn to” D&AD and the 2025 festival itself. That led us to think about how the typeface could embody that principle in motion. Could the weight intensify? Could the forms evolve? Could the typography feel more and more like D&AD the closer you got to the event, visually echoing the magnetic pull at the heart of the concept?

This has been described as a font made “by designers for designers”. Do you agree and why?

Absolutely. For designers, D&AD is a reference point. A benchmark. Most commercial creativity is designed for someone else, usually not another designer. This project gave us the rare opportunity to design with the design community directly in mind, and that was incredibly satisfying.

It meant we could lean into craft, detail, and typographic nuance in a way that might not always be possible on more mainstream, consumer-facing projects. The audience understands the references, appreciates the decisions, and notices the subtleties.

There was also something very fitting about using the pencil (the most universal tool in the creative process) as the foundation for the typeface. It’s a shared symbol across disciplines, whether you’re a designer, illustrator, writer, or animator. So the typeface wasn’t just made for designers in a literal sense, it was built around a tool and a mindset that the whole creative community recognises, right down to the weight range itself, which follows the natural spectrum of the pencil, from H through to 8B.

How does this typeface bridge the gap between the physical award and digital design?

It starts with a respectful refresh of Franklin Gothic, a digital workhorse. From there, we introduced references to the physical pencil through specific letter features. The challenge was making those gestures feel intentional, not decorative. Distinctive, but always legible.

Can you walk us through your design process?

All type starts in the same place. Calligraphy. Whether a font is geometric, grotesque, or blackletter, that DNA is always there. Understanding that helps us define classification, contrast, and proportion.

From there, we sketch. Not polished drawings, but loose studies to explore where personality can live. Then we move into digital. This is where things get messy. Type design is never linear. Experience just helps you move faster through the chaos, back and forth, until the system holds together.

Can you tell us about the typographic choices you made?

Once the foundations were set, we asked how much “salt and pepper” the design needed. Enough character to feel unmistakably D&AD, but not so much that it became self-conscious.

We respected Franklin Gothic’s structure while introducing the hexagonal pencil form in a controlled way. Legibility was key. Letters like i, j, and l gained subtle tails to avoid confusion with I. The family is uni-width, ensuring consistent spacing and rhythm across all weights.

The hexagon appears in selected letters. B, D, P, R, a, b, d, o, p, q, as well as tittles and punctuation. When words come together, the shape emerges naturally.

What was the biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?

Time. The schedule was tight, so the thinking had to be sharper. The more demanding the brief, the more important it is to define strategy before drawing anything.

We studied D&AD’s typographic history, extracted its DNA, then reintroduced the hexagonal form while meeting modern legibility standards. That’s type strategy. Design decisions with purpose.

This font was used across the entire 2025 awards cycle. What was your proudest moment seeing it brought to life?

Arriving at Southbank Centre and seeing Pencil Gothic everywhere. Walls, merch, motion, specimens. That’s when it becomes real. Moments like that remind you why you do this. Huge credit to the JKR team. They handled the type beautifully.

Tell us something about Pencil Gothic that people might not know.

The original ampersand had a completely unhinged hexagonal buckle on top. It didn’t survive.

Where do you find inspiration as a type designer?

Everywhere that isn’t a screen. The barber’s waiting room. Old magazines. Ads on buses. Theatre posters while you’re queuing. Life, basically. The more you look, the more you see.