When a Typeface Becomes a Character: Charlotte Rohde's Oficía Mono

Berlin-based artist and type designer Charlotte Rohde has released a new typeface, Oficía Mono. It grew out of a lettering job for a Mercedes campaign back in 2022, briefly available through Solitype in a single light weight before being shelved.

Rohde pulled the project out of the archive last year and reworked it into something larger. Stylistically informed by Antique Olive and Gill Sans, the typeface has since been followed by a companion release, Oficía Poly.

According to Rohde, one motivation behind the project was the fact that Eric Gill, the designer of Gill Sans, is a historically problematic figure; she says she wanted to create a typeface that fills the same need, designed instead "by her female hand."

Rather than a conventional type specimen, Oficía Mono was introduced through a performance, installation and live print event developed with designer Tina Lehmkuhl. A group of writers contributed fictional "performance reviews" of Rohde's artistic persona, Charlotte Rohde™, and those texts became the specimen's content.

The project has since expanded further: Oficía has become the protagonist of Rohde's forthcoming novel, appearing as a hedge fund manager named Oficía Greif who speculates on the value of words. Rohde describes the book's premise as a world in which language is no longer a commons but a financial asset, with words trademarked and traded in funds.

Rohde has previously designed custom typefaces for the dating app Feeld, the Kanal-Centre Pompidou and Berlin's HKW.