Corpid began life as an exclusive typeface by the name of “Agro Sans”, commissioned by Studio Dumbar as a corporate font for the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture. The ministry needed to decide whether to buy a Frutiger license for all its computers, or commission a new typeface of its own.

When studying Frutiger, Lucas de Groot’s impression was that it seemed to come “from a time gone by”. The characters of the two faces differ most significantly in their respective tension, that is to say the relationship of the inner to the outer contours. Corpid has a diagonal contrast, giving it a calligraphic touch, but one that is nevertheless more subtle than that of de Groot’s Thesis.


Corpid (shown in black) is more open and has a stronger tension than Frutiger (shown in grey)