Cudeco
Read time:
2-3 min
Client:
Iceland University of the Arts
Industry:
arts & culture
Start:
End:
Duration:
6 days
Cudeco is a custom display typeface designed as part of a content-based design course at the Iceland University of the Arts. The brief asked students to choose a subject and build a design response around it. My subject was Íslenzkir Hljóðfæraleikarar — a recurring segment in Jazzblaðið, an Icelandic jazz magazine published between 1948 and 1953, featuring profiles of Icelandic jazz musicians.
The typeface was the first deliverable, built to carry the identity of the broader editorial project that followed.
Concept
The goal was a typeface that felt rooted in the jazz era without simply reproducing it. Art Deco provided the structural foundation — the geometry, the confidence, the decorative ambition. Cubism introduced the tension: fractured angles, irregular stroke weights, letterforms that feel like they've been assembled rather than drawn.
The result is a typeface that sits somewhere between monument and movement — bold enough to anchor a headline, strange enough to make you look twice.
