Castledown

From 2012 — 2014 Colophon Foundry collaborated closely with Castledown Primary School in Hastings, UK. The project began as a commission for a custom typeface for the school but soon developed into an initiative to develop and unify typography within primary education.

Castledown’s Headteacher, Mr. Small, was frustrated with the disparate fonts used by schools to teach children letterform recognition whilst learning reading and handwriting. By encapsulating all requirements into a common DNA to be used throughout the type family, we were able to build a typeface that had the key considerations of readability, differentiation of letters (such as the lowercase ‘l’ and uppercase ‘I’), and an understanding of how writing is taught in schools built into its genetic makeup.

The type family’s accolades include a nomination for Design of the Year 2014 at the Design Museum and a Premier Award at the International Society of Typographic Designers in 2014.

Castledown is available in three core-weights — Regular, Bold and Heavy — all with corresponding Italic and Fun variants. These Fun variants are more expressive and act as softer counterparts (and a more refined variant of Comic Sans). A stylistic dotted version of the Regular version is also available, as well as a script-variant in the form of the Cursive and three Instructional versions for writing practice. Castledown is available to license in both Standard (‘STD’) and Professional (‘PRO’) versions. The latter contains multiple OpenType features and stylistic sets allowing for further versatility.

The Castledown family is also available in an educational version for schools, including instructional styles, please contact us for pricing and more information.