Perfektta is a sans-serif typeface family with narrow proportions and a clearly visible contrast in the stems. The story of this typeface began with a photo of a road sign taken in Sardinia, Italy. The sign had a strange-looking zeros which immediately attract our attention.

We assumed that the Italian workers either found it difficult to cut a perfect oval from the foil, or were simply being lazy. Either way, we were fascinated by the rhombus shaped zero. That unusual construction became the base for our first sketch of the typeface. From there, we gradually developed the other letterforms using the same principle.

The witty name refers to the imperfect construction that contrasts with some perfect shapes in various parts of the letters. These two aspects of the interaction create the right tension in the final aesthetic of the typeface.

Later we looked into the Italian road sign typeface known as “Alfabeto Stretto” and found out more about it. It’s interesting to note that the design of the zero in the original example is quite peculiar, as are other characters. This probably stems from modifications made to the original “British Transport” alphabet glyphs to make them bolder and narrower. A humorous detail is that the distorted version in standard proportions is called “Alfabeto Normale”.