RAILvertical / horizontal
About / Newell
ENGINEERED,
NOT DRAWN.
Newell is an original geometric display typeface. Every glyph is assembled from the same vocabulary — vertical rails, horizontal rails, and 45-degree diagonals — joined with squared terminals. The system is parametric: glyphs are generated from declarative rules, not hand-drawn, so the entire alphabet inherits one visual grammar.
It started with a logo. The mark — a stylized N built from parallel rails and a decisive diagonal — suggested a richer visual language. Instead of designing letters one at a time, the whole alphabet could share the same DNA: rails, diagonals, and the squared corners where they meet.
The result reads as engineered rather than drawn. Closer to a barcode or a circuit diagram than to a humanist serif. The signature gesture — that descending N diagonal — recurs in M, K, R, V, W, X, Y, Z, and the digits 1, 2, 4, 7. It's the family resemblance.
THE DNA
Three primitives. Nothing else.
RAILhorizontal bar
DIAGexactly 45 degrees
METRICS
- 1000 units per em (industry standard)
- 700 cap height, 0 baseline
- 110 units monoline stroke, squared terminals
- 45° diagonals only — the generator asserts it
FORBIDDEN
- Curves of any kind (no Bézier control points)
- Rounded terminals
- Diagonals at angles other than 45 degrees
- Outlines or metrics borrowed from existing typefaces
The full constitution lives in SPEC.md on GitHub.
WHAT'S IN v0.1
This is the first public release. 61 glyphs:
uppercase A-Z, digits 0-9, basic punctuation, plus the
housekeeping glyphs (.notdef, space). Single weight
(Regular), static build (variable axes planned for v0.2). Three
compiled formats: OTF (3.3 KB), TTF (4.5 KB), WOFF2 (1.8 KB).
KNOWN LIMITATIONS
v0.1 is functional but unpolished. Pure rails + 45-degree diagonals cannot render every traditional letterform cleanly. Documented honestly:
- S reads as Z — fundamental to the vocabulary; v0.2 adds a third primitive to fix it
- C, D, G, O, P, Q, R, B are rectilinear approximations of curved letters
- A, V, W are wider than the alphabet average (each leg is a full cap-height diagonal)
- M, W inner notches reach only mid-height
- 0 visually identical to O — relies on context
- No kerning, no lowercase, no diacritics yet
Recommended for display and headline use, not long-form body text. Not yet "production" — that's v1.0.
ROADMAP
v0.1 ✅
Alpha — shipped 2026-07-25Uppercase, digits, punctuation. Static Regular. Established the DNA and proved the parametric pipeline.
v0.2
Reads like a typefaceLegible S (new primitive), lowercase a-z, class-based kerning, 0/O disambiguation.
v0.3
A type systemVariable weight axis (Light → Black), the signature NDI (Newell Diagonal Intensity) axis, italic, full Latin diacritics.
v0.4
A brand systemIcons, motion language, Figma components — Newell as a complete visual language.
v1.0
ProductionFull character set (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek), hinting, OpenType features, optical corrections, specimen book.
WHO
Jordan Newell — design and engineering. Built the parametric generator, wrote the SPEC, designed every glyph, compiled the binaries, made this page.
The font is original work generated from rules in SPEC.md. No existing typeface was traced or used as a metrics reference.