The goal of Sys was to create an extremely versatile typeface for both print and screen usage, e.g. a potential substitute for Verdana as a mean to view text on the web or for MacOS’s own Geneva and other system fonts, being also as reliable in print up to the point of being printed at 6pt size while retaining its legibility.

The basic forms of Sys’s letters are pretty geometric since they are based on the research for a functional bitmap at 10pt size. Hence, the design retains a geometric flavour, recalling models of famous monospaced typefaces such as Isonorm and DIN.

While designing letters I decided to revive the use of inktraps, tiny spaces positioned where strokes meet at an acute angle, to avoid the excess of ink when printing in small sizes. Matthew Carter used very skillfully this device when he designed his Bell Centennial typeface for the Bell Company phone books and recently was somewhat reprised by Barry Deck in its idiosyncratic typeface Eunuverse in a way that, albeit interesting, works more on an aesthetic rather than on a functional level.

Using this device in Sys, instead, made me discover that inktraps, originally conceived for print, are–at some degree–an unexpected aid to manual hinting, being the latter one of Sys’ strengths, with accurate instructions for each point size, from 9pt upwards, to achieve a rendering of perfectly clean bitmaps at virtually every screen size.