A unique family of fonts created to represent Wales to the world...

Our aim with the Cymru Wales font family was to create contemporary European typefaces with a unique personality and a 'sense of place' baked in. The key to the latter were the eight digraphs (unique letter combinations) that feature in the Welsh alphabet as well as the curved 'd' character that has quickly become the cornerstone of both the Sans and Serif.

"The creation of unique Welsh digraphs provide a visual highlight to the phonic which is elegant, educational and quite simply genius."

Given a serif typeface’s flowing single-line gestures and cursive forms, Cymru Wales Serif displays additional character defining traits such as the open bowls that feature in the B, d, dd, g, P, R and &.

Two years after the creation of CW Sans it became obvious that a broader and richer offering in terms of typographical hierarchy was needed. Cymru Wales Serif is designed for longer, editorial reads. Using both typefaces together offer designers an extensive and layered ‘kit of parts’.

Independent accessibility research has proven that the core characters of ‘Cymru Wales Sans’ are more legible than ‘Arial’ whilst those of ‘Cymru Wales Serif’ are more legible than ‘Times New Roman’. And crucially, rather than being deemed as ‘linguistic obstacles’, the digraphs were perceived as valuable educational legibility assets — highlighting the fact they are actually different characters, that in turn are pronounced differently.

Comprehensive accessibility studies were conducted by Burdus Access in collaboration with Applied Wayfinding and Smörgåsbord.

Each pillar of the Welsh Government needed a distinct graphic language as they target very different markets and therefore need to present a unique and ownable personality whilst also being firmly rooted in the overarching ‘mother brand’. We assigned different weights and cuts of the font family to each of the sectors. To illustrate this ‘Trade & Invest’ (being business orientated) uses CW Sans uppercase, whereas ‘Tourism’ requires a more approachable and informal graphic language and so uses CW Sans Medium, set in sentence case.

‘Creative Wales’ required a looser and more spirited ‘language’ and so we created a customised, slithered version of CW Serif which naturally lends itself to animation.

Created exclusively for Transport for Wales, 'Cymru Sans Transport' is an all-caps affair based on 'Cymru Wales Sans' and sees the letters stencilled in a utilitarian manner which also references TfW’s core 'T' roundel.

Whilst first and foremost our aim was to create a font family for the Cymru Wales Brand, that would represent Wales in an authentic and creative way externally, we also aimed to educate people on the characteristics and sounds of our unique language. With careful application these typefaces can help evolve our identity as a nation. With these foundations now in place, we're looking at further ways to introduce the typefaces into ‘the everyday’. One (currently speculative) project is 'CAMBRIA' — ‘A Journal of Record for Wales’.

"The Cymru Wales font family has huge potential to promote 'a sense of place' and 'identity', making Wales and the Welsh language very relevant in the 21st century.”