Ambiguity™ font family
Designed by Charles Nix in 2019
Ambiguity is a type family with five distinct personalities or ‘states’, created as a tool for coaxing designers and brands out of their comfort zone. It embraces both tradition and radicality, as well as generosity and thrift, encouraging us to question our beliefs about the intersection of style and meaning.
The family is designed by Charles Nix, who describes Ambiguity as “as much thought experiment as typeface.”
Its five states—Tradition, Radical, Thrift, Generous and Normate—each express or subvert different aspects of typographic tradition.
Tradition is conservative, relying on historical letter shapes. Radical rejects inherited ideas of proportion, making typically slender letterforms wide, and wide letterforms slender. “It’s contrarian,” says Nix. Thrift cherry picks the condensed shapes from Tradition and Radical, while Generous does the same for wide forms. Normate sits at the center, a synthetic blend of all of the others
“Tradition is very comforting,” says Nix. “It’s the mask of conservatism. It’s calming because it delivers the proportions we expect. With Thrift more fits into a smaller space, so it’s great where words want to get large, like gigantic headlines, or text needs to cram in, like small screen type. You get a sense of carefree and luxury from the Generous cut. One would expect the Radical to be used in a sort of Dadaist way, but in a classic context it provides an enjoyable jolt.”
Ambiguity is a litmus test. Designers could spend hours trying on typefaces that offer just one of these voices. Ambiguity provides five different personalities—ideas—beliefs—each of which also work seamlessly together.
“It’s a palettea, like idea cards,” he says. “It’s a way of making yourself see differently. My hope is that traditionalists will try on radical clothes and vice versa. It’s a way of exploring outside your comfort zone, breaking out of the doldrums, by stepping through a variety of voices.”
The family is designed by Charles Nix, who describes Ambiguity as “as much thought experiment as typeface.”
Its five states—Tradition, Radical, Thrift, Generous and Normate—each express or subvert different aspects of typographic tradition.
Tradition is conservative, relying on historical letter shapes. Radical rejects inherited ideas of proportion, making typically slender letterforms wide, and wide letterforms slender. “It’s contrarian,” says Nix. Thrift cherry picks the condensed shapes from Tradition and Radical, while Generous does the same for wide forms. Normate sits at the center, a synthetic blend of all of the others
“Tradition is very comforting,” says Nix. “It’s the mask of conservatism. It’s calming because it delivers the proportions we expect. With Thrift more fits into a smaller space, so it’s great where words want to get large, like gigantic headlines, or text needs to cram in, like small screen type. You get a sense of carefree and luxury from the Generous cut. One would expect the Radical to be used in a sort of Dadaist way, but in a classic context it provides an enjoyable jolt.”
Ambiguity is a litmus test. Designers could spend hours trying on typefaces that offer just one of these voices. Ambiguity provides five different personalities—ideas—beliefs—each of which also work seamlessly together.
“It’s a palettea, like idea cards,” he says. “It’s a way of making yourself see differently. My hope is that traditionalists will try on radical clothes and vice versa. It’s a way of exploring outside your comfort zone, breaking out of the doldrums, by stepping through a variety of voices.”
Ambiguity Normate Rounded
Desktop fonts are designed to
be installed on a computer for
use with applications.
Licensed per user.
Annual web fonts are licensed for a set number of page views.
Annual web fonts are licensed
for a set number of page views.
Application licensing allows fonts to be embedded in your software applications. The license may be based on the number of titles or the number of installations.
Electronic Document Fonts can be
embedded in an eBook, eMagazine or
eNewspaper. Fonts are licensed
annually per issue.
Server fonts can be installed on
a server and e.g. used by automated
processes to create items.
A license is per server core CPU per year.
A Digital Ads license allows you to embed web fonts in digital ads, such as ads created in HTML5. These license is based on the number of ad impressions.
Ambiguity
You will receive all available versions
with your web font license.
with your web font license.
Web font license includes all available language options.
Technical details
Suitable browsers:
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Internet Explorer
Opera
Safari
Font size:
36 KB (WOFF2)
,
36 KB (WOFF)
Catalog number:
168506073
Number of characters:
470
