Submitted by: Mike Stephens @WeAreRaw
Role: Developer

We were asked by Jonathan Hill – the man behind all of The Northern Block’s carefully crafted typefaces – to create an online home for his font foundry that would enable him to showcase, and crucially, sell his range of typefaces through his own independent site rather than through a third party.

The site aims to mirror and match the contemporary typefaces and provides visitors with an exciting visual journey through his work and online store. We used a grid-based system, with a real emphasis on functionality and clarity.

The whole font library is accessible from the homepage and visitors can play and explore the individual fonts using the type tester tool, helping them to be as confident as possible that the type is right for them before making a purchase directly through the site.

I dig the chunky, squared off look of the site, it all goes with the type really well in the end. There is also a visual simplicity going on here that’s really subtle. The details are pretty complex on this site, like the font viewer and the interactions like on the main block where you can access all the typefaces right from the home page. Wonderful work.