Ultramega: The Interview

April 2025

To mark the release of her first typeface, Ultramega, Rachel and I sat down and discussed her inspiration, designing during COVID, and her hopes for her typeface.

J: All right, so why'd you choose this style in particular? This font? I guess we'll start with that.

R: I was still kind of learning the basics of type design at that point. I shouldn't say that, should I?

J: No, you can say that.

R: That’s the truth. I was still learning the basics of type design—and lettering in general—so it made sense to start with something where I had to think more precisely about how everything flowed together. Like line width—while it still had to be very linear—I had to think about how it looks visually or optically with that. So it was teaching me optics while it was also teaching me the rules of type design.

The other thing was to me, serif fonts, those were too fun for me. If you give me something too fun like that, then I go crazy with it, cause then I'm like, “oh, it's cool, we can do this. We could have this.” Sometimes maximalism is not what you want when you're trying to make something practical, and I wanted to make a practical font; something legible that anyone could really use, but was still unique. Because I feel like sometimes geometric sans serifs, they're... I don't wanna say that they're not charming, but I just kind of like glaze over them when I'm reading them. When I look at a serif, like, if I'm looking at like Caslon, I'm always like, this is pleasing to read and look at the rhythm of the type. But when I look at geometric sans serifs, sometimes I don't get that same pleasing feeling. So I was kind of trying to do that with this, too, keep a fun rhythm with it.

J: Nice. This is based on a historical typeface.

R: Yes, it is.

J: Why do you choose the one that you did?

R: Because it was an interesting story. It was like a it was an inspiring story almost. So the backstory, it was when the when the Soviet Union was around, the West wasn't sending them metal typefaces or, you know, type faces for print. And so then they were seeing all of this stuff come in from the west, and they saw Futura, and they were like, “that is the coolest font ever.” And in my opinion, yeah, Futura is the best geometric sans serif; it’s the coolest one. Maybe ITC, uh God, what's it called? Avant Garde. So they bootlegged their own so that they could use it for stuff. They used it for print, and they used it for poster designs, and it's charming.

There's something so charming about seeing this bootlegged font that was used by millions upon millions of people, just because they liked the way someone else did it.

J: Yeah, I'm gonna pull up the reference to the original because there's some really interesting stuff in the original. The “t” is basically an upside-down “f”.

R: Yeah, that's the thing is they had to be so smart with it. It's like they didn't quite know like the Latin alphabet in the same way that we don’t really know the Cyrillic characters. So they made these choices that we would never really make. That's the thing is like you can see parts of it that look like especially the “g”, the “g” looks like it was influenced by Cyrillic to me. They were trying to be efficient. Maybe they didn't have money, but they were still trying to be creative.

I'm not gonna preach too much, but I love it when artists work within limitations and they still make something really interesting and cool.

J: I always have to M was really strange in this one.

R: The M is, but it's so powerful looking.

J: You kept that for the for your design.

R: It needed to be kept. That's like one of the standout features of this typeface. It’s essentially an upside down W.

But yeah, it's different from Futura, because in Futura the J doesn't have any kind of hook, just a straight line. The R is very different.

J: So how long did it take you?

R: Like what, two years almost? We started working on it in earnest in like, what, August of 2019? And then during COVID, this was like this was like my bastion during COVID. This helped me a lot. I would be up until like 4 a.m working on this. I was also just drawing though. and then we would go bike. That was my was the COVID time. So that was the the like the summer frolic of my life. Then after that, I think I worked on it a little bit, but not so much because it kind of sat while other projects took precedence.

J: I’m glad we're finally getting it out. And it's changed a little bit since it's not exactly a one to one revival.

R: It's a rethinking. It's a reimagining. Which is the same as the other one.

J: So you're just adding to the story of that typeface.

R: A bootlegging of that.

J: Where do you wanna see it used? What would you be your ideal situation for it?

R: I wanna see this on some... See you're not gonna like my answer. There's a few bands that use, like a a font really similar to this for their album covers and then all of their liner notes, like the lyrics and stuff. It just it reads so well, and I think this would, work really well for it. Something very ‘70s inspired or even ‘90s inspired. I think it would work really well for it.

J: So, did you have the ‘70s in mind as an inspiration?

R: Oh, yeah, I did.

J: Is that why the x-height was so high?

R: Yes! Yes. I liked it. I wanted to make it different. I feel like thing with uh geometric serifs—GSS—is that to the untrained person they all look really similar, and they always have a tiny x-height. So, having one with a huge x-height is a lot less common. It's it's also cool.

Book covers! It would look so cool on like a like like a science fiction novel. A Blood Incantation album would have that; I'm not even joking. They love this kind of stuff. Wow. I wanna see it on some bootlegged vinyl.

J: Because it is based on a Soviet typeface, should there be Cyrillic?

R: Eventually? Eventually, I'll start on that. You keep doing what you're doing.

J: Do you have any thoughts on the typeface?

R: I love precision. That's it. I was thinking about it, and throughout my life that’s been the entire thing. I just I love precisely made things and I think typefaces are very under-appreciated aspect of that. You have to have a very discerning eye. Very critical. Any final words, let me think. Buy this font.

J: Buy this font?

R: Buy this font. Yeah. If you if you don't, what are you doing? Seriously, man.

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