Sydney Morning Herald
MAUD, 2023
The Sydney Morning Herald is one of the oldest and most recognisable mastheads in the world. Founded in 1831, its nameplate has become as much a part of Australian cultural life as the journalism it carries. And yet, across decades of digital reproduction and technological change, something had been quietly lost. Each successive re-interpretation had introduced small compromises, gradual erosions of the letterforms that gave the original its authority and character.
Our commission was to restore what time and technology had taken away.
Working with typographer and letterist Daniel Veneklaas, we returned to the historical record. Each individual letterform was researched, studied and recreated from primary sources, rebuilt from the ground up with the same care and craft that defined the original. Nothing was assumed. Nothing was approximated. Every decision was grounded in evidence.
The result is a masthead restored to its full integrity, as considered and authoritative as the day it was first set in type.
Completed to concept.
Completed while Executive Creative Director at MAUD, alongside Tom Clayton and Lachlan Richards. Masthead redraw by Daniel Veneklaas.