Jordan Typeface
Free for personal use, $20 for commercial use. Please consider donating to support the designer’s work!
The 90s Nostalgia Typeface That All Sports Fans (But Really All Of Us) Need in 2020.
On March 11, 2020, the National Basketball Association, or NBA, announced the suspension of the 2019–2020 season following the positive coronavirus test of one of its players.The following days and weeks consisted of a domino effect of national and international sports leagues delaying and some inevitably canceling their seasons due to the spread of the pandemic. Eventually, the NBA would restart on an isolated Disney World campus colloquially referred to as “the bubble,” where there were very strict Covid testing protocols and zero fans present. But for the several months of “these uncertain times” surrounding the stopping and restarting of numerous sports leagues (and life, more generally), sports fans and NBA fans in particular turned toward the past for comfort...
But it was one documentary series in particular that captured the attention of what seemed like all American sports fans for 10 short hours over a period of 5 weeks…
The Last Dance. A 2020 American sports documentary miniseries that revolves around the career of Michael Jordan, with particular focus on his final season with the Chicago Bulls. The series features exclusive footage from a film crew that had an all-access pass to the Bulls, as well as interviews of many NBA personalities including Jordan himself.
I was tasked with creating an uppercase display typeface for a specific audience and for a specific purpose; I chose something that had given me and many others the greatest comfort during quarantine, a return to nostalgic hard nosed basketball. The initial concept for the typeface centered around iconic moments and players throughout NBA history, but upon further consideration, I realized that there is only one figure who reigns supreme when we wax nostalgic about American basketball…
Michael Jordan. Once I made the choice of working solely in Michael Jordan’s image, I deep dived into a historical archive of his career in an attempt to pick out the 26 most iconic moments.
I chose the images, then assigned each one a letterform. Most were based on the shape of MJ’s body within the image in hopes that it would emulate the shape of each glyph. I made a simple line drawing, then slowly added in color, shading, and patterns.
I experimented with a single family that had three different styles based on size and of varying detail. However, after receiving some feedback, I decided to pare down that idea and to keep it simpler.
The final Jordan typeface design consists of silhouetted figures in front of slab serif letterforms, meant to emulate the iconic Chicago Bulls jerseys during the late 90s championship runs. The typeface is available in three color combinations to emphasize contrast between the glyphs.
Of course, the typeface could be used for marketing the The Last Dance documentary itself.
As well as used within the United Center, where the Chicago Bulls play, for wayfinding and in-arena graphics.
And lastly the Jordan typeface can be used for t-shirts, posters, and much more.
