Control is Christian Schwartz’s irreverent interpretation of the sans serif lettering examples in Walter Käch’s 1949 lettering manual Schriften Lettering Écriture (see Rauchwaren / Röntgen Therapie). Miguel Reyes designed the Cursive, loosely based on Van Dijk, drawn by Jan van Dijk for Letraset in 1982; Hrvoje Živčić later drew the thin styles for the entire family. Added to Commercial Type’s Vault in October 2022, and moved to the main library in June 2024. “Schwartz has taken the idea of the lettering manual literally: Control has axes for weight, contrast, and apertures, and users are meant to find the right combination of these for any application. There is no ‘correct’ version—the typeface is meant to be fine-tuned for each situation.” [Commercial Type]

“Schwartz first sketched Control in 2017, when he and Berton Hasebe were working on a commission for T, the New York Times Style Magazine. He came back to the project in 2022 for a refresh of Interview magazine, which inspired TNT tracking (based on 1970s headline treatments from the archive) and the Cursive, loosely inspired by the 1982 Letraset face Van Dijk. Control first appeared in a special publication produced by Interview for Art Basel Miami in November 2022.” [release notes]