August’s Font of the Month: Megabase v3
Megabase is my personal favorite of the Megafonts, even if is not as widely used as Megazoid and Megascope. I am a sucker for horizontal stress (as you might know) and I appreciate its space-age funkiness and the playful up-and-down of its vertical alignments.
But I’ve been feeling some regret about a few decisions that I made back in February 2020 that I worry limit its usefulness (at least to the extent that one can think of a typeface like this as “useful” 🤪).
In particular, I’ve been concerned that Megabase’s thin stems and high stroke contrast made it too delicate, and therefore too difficult to work with in anything but the largest sizes. Don’t get me wrong…this is a display font, and the contrast is kinda the whole point. But I’ve found myself wishing that I hadn’t strayed quite so far from its chunky ancestors like Gothic Bold and Sintex.
So this month I’m sending you Megabase v3, complete with a weight axis that adds some sturdier, meatier options.
I don’t have a ton more to say about this design, so I hope you don’t mind if I keep this one brief. After all, this new addition was a simple transformation—take the thin vertical stems and make them thicker, and everything gets a little wider in the process.
I also chose to remove the rounded edges that were present in the original design. The softness felt unnecessary; the shapes are more expressive if they remain stark and abstract. Unfortunately, I didn’t save a version of the font before I added the corners and I couldn’t find a way to reliably automate it, so I had to remove them manually from every corner of every glyph. It took forever!
Finally, I added the same weight axis to Megabase’s Open style and accompanying color variable font. Like Nickel, it uses the primary color of your text for the base shape, and then a customizable color palette for the fill. By default, the fill is a semi-transparent shade, so it will react to whatever color or image is behind it.
You can play with Megabase’s variable axis, color palettes, and numerous OpenType alternates over at my new online typesetter (developed by Miniware, a longtime club member). I think this feels closer to what I’d like to eventually offer as a retail release for Megabase, but I’m certainly curious if there’s anything else you’d like to see.
