A distinctive addition to the design landscape

Does Only Extended look familiar? That’s because you’ve likely seen it already—an early version has been at the heart of Swiss Typefaces’ branding since 2019. It was since thoroughly expanded and developed into a full family. Only is now available in 9 weights with matching italics, ranging from Hairline to Black and in Variable Font format. 

First and foremost, Only is… Extended! Rather than starting with the artificial expansion of one of our standard-width typeface, Only raised a challenge and a question: How would it look if it was designed with the initial goal of being extended only? Where would be the sweet spot for such a typeface to look neither horizontally stretched nor vertically squeezed? This approach led to the creation of Only Extended and induced most of its design choices and unique letter proportions.

To achieve our design goals, radical choices were made such as the introduction of some lettershapes inspired by the monospace fonts tradition: the usually narrowest letters like uppercase ‘I’ and lowercase ‘i’, ‘j’ and ‘l’ were given slab serifs to make them wider and balance the overall rhythm of the text. The same principle was applied to uppercase letters ‘Y’ and ‘J’ and our partners at CSTM Fonts, who took care of the Cyrillic design, also implemented that design feature on some of the Cyrillic letters.

Only Extended is infused with Swiss Typefaces’ design DNA. Therefore, it is a blend of the two opposite ends of the Sans Serif genre, bearing inspirations from Geometric Sans – see particularly the monolithic capitals – while staying faithful to its Grotesque roots, with typical lettershapes and slightly tapering connections between curves and stems.

Another distinctive trait of Only Extended is its super short ascenders and descenders. It makes the typefaces stocky, enhancing its horizontality. Conveniently, it is allowing dense text setting with minimal line gaps, perfect for a pull quote or an editorial deck.

With Only Extended, we are also introducing Swiss Typefaces’ first Variable Font offer. Simply labeled VF, these powerful files not only contain all existing static styles but also offer additional flexibility, allowing smooth fine-tuning via the Weight axis. Variable Font files are included with the purchase of the full static family—and vice versa, at no additional cost.

Packed with Cyrillic, Only is also our first typeface following our recent Suisse Int’l update to support our new extensive Latin character set, offering native support for languages as diverse as Vietnamese, Yoruba, Baoulé and many more. 

With Swiss Typefaces’ design attitude at its core, Only is truly versatile and definitively not restricted to use cases traditionally associated with extended designs.

Its monospace-like design and unique aesthetic proposition place it outside of today’s typical sans-serif offer. Only Extended’s ultramodern geometry combined with a Swiss grotesque spirit are making it a new and distinctive addition to the design landscape.

Now we are excited to see it in the wild and discover all the ways graphic designers and font lovers will find to use it!