Hato has rebranded the photography brand Capture One, taking it from a tech-focused software company to a community platform, with a new vision of “connecting people through photography”. To do it, Hato has shifted the focus from the final output (that perfectly composed shot) to the practice of taking a photograph itself. Collaborators include Connor Campbell Studio on motion and Calvin Kwok, who designed a font around the numerical typography typically found on lenses.
Specifically, the typeface – a condensed grotesque font with flat terminals – was inspired by an archive of lenses Hato found that were produced by Capture One’s parent company, Phase One. “To convert the letters, we used a lot of tracing paper, printing techniques, photography and scanning,” says Ken Kirton, Hato partner and CD. Some of the letters were traced, while others were mono-printed. “It didn’t need to be an exact science, just a playful process to explore the letter forms and in turn refine the chosen ones into a full character set.”
“The number 8 and the Q are among my favourites,” says Ken. “They both have a warm but confidently awkward tone to them. The ratio of the two counters on the 8 is really playful, with its larger bottom belly.” Numbers and letters on lenses are typically engraved with a pantograph (which has the capacity of reducing large shapes into tiny proportional forms), and Hato has kept this effect by using monolinear stroke widths and rounded inner corners. How the typeface is used is also important. Hato replicates one of the most defining features of lens typography – its small size – by steering away from bold presentations.
