Best of the Week: Monospaces, Engraved Cotton, and Can Wine
Our curated roundup of the best of the week covers open-source monospaces, cotton stationery, and tactile books from ISO week 2026-W43.
Good design doesn't need a thirty-page strategy deck to explain itself. Across the studio projects we studied over the past seven days, the strongest work came down to vulcanised fibreboard luggage corners, 100% cotton card stocks, and variable letterforms that adjust their terminal sharpness to match the acidity of a dry Riesling. Whether it's an open-source terminal font built for command-line speed or a New York gala alphabet pulled straight from a 1970s oyster bar sign, these projects earn their keep on the page and in the hand.
Best of the Week: Design and Branding Picks
Globe-Trotter by Ragged Edge
Most luxury heritage houses sand away every bit of eccentricity until they look like every other fashion label on Bond Street. London studio Ragged Edge pushed British luggage maker Globe-Trotter in the opposite direction, anchoring the rebrand around the scuffs, brass rivets, and vulcanised fibreboard corners that have defined its suitcases for 125 years. That restraint pays off. The sharp display wordmark and archival luggage tag lockups feel built for long-haul transit.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by Ragged Edge
Server Mono by Blaze Type
The type does the heavy lifting here. Commissioned by Jimmy Lee at Seattle's Internet Development Studio Company (INTDEV), Matthieu Salvaggio and Tim Vanhille at Blaze Type drew Server Mono as their first SIL-licensed open-source monospace family. Inspired by San Francisco Mono and classic ASCII art grids, the Regular and Slanted cuts keep zero-slash counters and punctuation crystal clear inside dense terminal windows and brutalist web tables.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by Blaze Type
Ambijus by OlssønBarbieri
Non-alcoholic dining drinks often get stuck with preachy wellness labels. Oslo and London studio OlssønBarbieri gave fermented botanical beverage Ambijus a layered packaging identity built around optical dual-perception illustrations, uncoated paper stocks, and custom foil neck seals. Every bottle reads like a sommelier-grade table piece that rewards a second look across the dinner table.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by OlssønBarbieri on Behance
The 43rd Annual of the Type Directors Club by Tereza Bettinardi
It works on paper first. For the 43rd edition of the Type Directors Club annual, designer Tereza Bettinardi turned hundreds of winning entries from the 68th TDC competition into a tight editorial monograph where technical index tables and colophons take center stage. Constructed in InDesign with expanded counterform cover lettering and high-saturation section dividers, the book paces dense multi-column essays alongside crisp specimen cards.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by Tereza Bettinardi on Behance
Crane Stationery by COLLINS
Two hundred years of American cotton papermaking could easily feel stiff or dusty. COLLINS reframed heritage stationery house Crane around modern correspondence and social wit, pairing copperplate engraved crests and crisp serif typography with saturated cobalt, saffron, and crimson envelope linings. Blind debossing on heavy 100% cotton cards reminds you why a handwritten note still beats an email.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by COLLINS
TT Norms Pro 4.100 by TypeType Foundry
Workhorse geometric sans-serifs live or die by their optical balance at extreme weights. In version 4.100 of TT Norms Pro, TypeType Foundry redrew the bold cuts, refined aperture widths across multiple scripts, and built an integrated set of geometric UI icons that lock directly onto the font's cap height and baseline grid. Nothing in the grid feels forced.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by TypeType Foundry on Behance
Candour Wine by Bedow
Stockholm studio Bedow ditched heavy glass bottles for Candour Wine, housing each batch in recyclable aluminum cans wrapped in tactile illustrated labels. The real hook is the TDC-winning variable wordmark: sharp terminals signal high acidity in the #004 Dry Riesling, while fuller stroke contrast and heavier terminal weight telegraph the fruitiness and body of the #005 Lively Red.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by Bedow
Varley Art Gallery Rebrand by Underline Studio
Regional art museums too often hide behind grey Swiss neutrality. Toronto practice Underline Studio gave the Varley Art Gallery of Markham a bold visual identity rooted in the color heritage of Group of Seven painter F.H. Varley, pairing a geometric VA monogram with color-blocked exhibition catalogues, street banners, and seasonal print guides.
View Feature on Abduzeedo · See the project by Underline Studio on Behance
Storefront Gala 2026 by Pentagram
Held inside Manhattan's historic Grand Central Oyster Bar, this year's benefit gala for Storefront for Art and Architecture needed an identity that could hold its own against tiled vaults and dark wood. Natasha Jen and her team at Pentagram New York built a complete blocky display alphabet inspired by Rudolph de Harak's classic Oyster Bar sign, locking thick black outlines and paintbox-bright fills into interlocking stacks across folded programmes and embroidered caps.
Explore the full feature on BP&O
Let's Grow Canada by Caserne
Agricultural campaigns almost always fall back on rustic barns and folksy scripts. Montréal studio Caserne skipped the hay-bale clichés entirely for Let's Grow Canada, pairing a crisp geometric maple-leaf horizon mark and 40 custom food-system icons by Benjamin Lamingo with the dense, punchy neo-grotesque Neue Brücke and Monokrom's Karelia.
Explore the full feature on BP&O
Lingo Typeface by Softdrive
Drawing a transitional serif with a complete International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) character set took Stuttgart designer Samuel Hahn four years of trial and refinement. Lingo blends the grid-built skeleton of the 18th-century Romain du Roi with warm Baskerville ear details, true Caslon-inflected italics, and a clever contextual alternate that flips the ear on double-g letter pairs so consecutive glyphs answer each other on the page.
Explore the full feature on TYPE01
We'll be back next Sunday with another look at the studios and independent designers pushing print, type, and digital interfaces forward. For more daily inspiration, browse our latest features on Abduzeedo.
