Some briefs last six weeks. Others involve your own football club. David Rudnick spent four years working on Rocastle, a hand-drawn, three-weight blackletter family for Arsenal. In It’s Nice That, he and Arsenal Creative Studio lead Johnnie Campbell unpack the process.
The typeface serves the moments when the club meets fashion, music, art and culture. Its foundations came from archives: old tickets, programmes, crests and things supporters had kept. It is named after the much-loved player David Rocastle. Rudnick is an Arsenal supporter himself, so character here quickly becomes about more than letter shapes.
What interests us is the responsibility. A corporate font generally needs to fit a brand guide. A club’s typeface also faces people for whom the crest became personal long ago. The source shows the family and the thinking behind it.
