It was not only the transparent, partly colored plastic tubes and terrariums that made an impression on the designer, but also the animals. Their two-tone fur inspired Joe to design his typeface as a Color Font. The rounded ends and bold font weights are reminiscent of the rodents’ distinctive chubby cheeks. The characteristics cuddly and chubby therefore apply equally to both animal and font. The lighter weights appear less playful and would make for a perfect logotype for young fashion brands, for example.
Hamster
Font Story: We are getting serious – with fun fonts!
Say goodbye to dull typefaces, and hello to Hamster – a font unlike any other.
Habitrails are translucent plastic tubes for use in home terrariums, designed specially for hamsters. (© Image: Shutterstock)
Capital Construction Kit
Hamster is a friendly display typeface. The six fonts from Thin to ExtraBlack each contain five hamster characters drawn by illustrator Laurie Schmitt. Users can determine the coloring of the fonts individually, for example to reflect the special colors of a brand, an event or a TV series.
Illustrator Laurie Schmitt drew five hamster character, that are included in the fonts.
“We wanted Hamster to be a celebration of joy and delight,” explains Joe Stitzlein. Therefore, he had color expert Leslie Stitzlein define an additional 13 fixed combinations, some colorful and playful, some subtle and elegant. While Grape Soda, Barbecue, Raspberry, Indigo and Burgundy are all darker and designed to work on white and pass WCAG (W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) contrast standards, Corn Mint, Mint Salmon, Mint Green, Gray Pink, Orange Pink, Pink Red, Tan White and Lavender work best on dark backgrounds. A non-color font and thus traditionally usable variant rounds off the palette.
We wanted Hamster to be a celebration of joy and delight.
In total, 15 variable fonts and 90 static fonts are available, as a complete package for the price of less than four individual styles – so even the purchase is fun!
Technical Details
The fonts are based on COLR-V0 technology. In contrast to the newer V1 specification, it works perfectly in all relevant browsers at the time of its release. On our specially created microsite and with the help of the free trial fonts, you can see and have a play for yourself.
As is not unusual for a technology that is still in its infancy, implementation on the program side is proceeding at different speeds. While it has long been supported by applications such as Microsoft Word, the variable desktop font does not yet work as desired in Adobe’s Creative Suite. As a workaround, we equipped the static fonts with an additional SVG table. While we await full support of color fonts across all applications, everything still works in a familiar way.
How to design a Variable Color Font: 1) draw some sketches 2) make the rest of the damn font.
Hamster is a refreshingly playful, fun font full of typographic possibilities. It’s the perfect addition to all designers’ type palettes, who like this namesake, are keen on collecting, fonts rather than nuts, of course ;) But unlike the cuddly role model, this hamster doesn’t even need to be fed … except with happy ideas.
We also had a lot of fun with the marketing campaign for the release of the typeface. Check out the full video on the microsite hamsterfont.com, where you can also play with the fonts and colors.