Simian Project

Simian Project

When Ed Benguiat helped develop the Planet of the Apes title graphic in 1968, little did he know that he was creating a lettering icon that defined an entire subculture. With the help of type designer Christian Schwartz, we combined the timeless simplicity of the original Planet logo and elements of the subsequent Photo-Lettering alphabet to assemble a conservative yet distinctive sanserif family. In a creative world where the bestselling typeface on most Walmart-esque font vending sites is Helvetica, you can go out on a limb with Simian and still satisfy the anal retentive tendencies of conservative clients. And there’s always Sacred Scroll if you need a font for the cover of your next Cancun vacation brochure. Incidentally, Simian was one of the first “boutique” foundry typefaces with OpenType features.