COPY, a contemporary grotesque

Initially, COPY was developed as a corporate font-family for the graphic book project ”Bastard“. The contents of this book combine literature, photography, illustration, sound, and typography and explore global cultural bastarding. Additionally a whole set of new experimental typedesigns from designers around the world have been presented with this publication.

The main challenge to Thomas Mettendorf, the designer of COPY, was to distinguish from the experimental content of ”Bastard“ and simultaneously build a bridge to it.


COPY, as the body type is simply called, has a sober and modern appearance that works as a typeface for information design. Its shapes are a result of text-typographical and formal considerations.
For example inktraps have been avoided or the contrast has been kept very low. (These formal features take into consideration that printing quality nowadays is much better so there is not such a need to recompense for this. In return many typefaces look strange when set in a display size because of their compensations.)

COPY CUT is a variation of COPY with slightly deconstructed shapes which has been cut to give several characters more significance. As a single character the ”y“ of COPY CUT has been replaced by an alternate design.

COPY SEMIGROTESK is a variation which fuses and mixes different stylistic features such as grotesque, serif and monospace characteristics.
A real ”bastard“ that also works very well as a typeface for bodytext. Its ”monospace“ appearance makes it a very legible choice because of the – even minimized – serifs.

For marking text, all font variations have been worked out in the weights italic and bold.
The italics have a strong 14° angle and are optically adjusted obliques. As a single character the ”a“ was replaced by an alternative design, using a shape of the italic repertoire.
The bold weights were designed by continuing the contrast of the regular weights and keeping it ”as low as possible“.
However besides the bold and italic weights the grotesque and semigrotesque variations of COPY can also be applied in a functional combination.

These features make COPY an interesting choice for contemporary design.

The whole or individual weights of COPY are available at myfonts.
COPY has been originally released by VOLCANO TYPE a foundry based in Karlsruhe, Germany.