Swift started life as a waste product: a bold of the Hollander typeface, also designed by Gerard Unger, whose weight “just didn’t quite seem to fit”. But it proved to be exactly what Unger needed for the newspaper typeface he was designing. And the tall x-height was just right too.



Swift was one of the first digital fonts designed for newspaper printing

However, after extensive print tests with the publisher at the time, Rudolf Hell in Kiel, Swift was given a distinctive character of its own: curves which narrow sharply towards the verticals, flat bowls and open counters. The font’s dynamic quality comes, above all, from the dialogue between its contours and counters. Some of these contours are reminiscent of the spanned wings of the bird from which the typeface takes its name.