Designed by Aldo Novarese in 1971 for the Nebiolo Foundry in Turin, Stop was created for a world, that of lead characters, about to undergo extreme downsizing.
It is thanks to the dry transfer world that this masterpiece will find its way to keyboards all over the world in a myriad of versions and interpretations, many of which without any claim to originality.
Stop becomes part of the R41 transferable collection almost at the same time as its creation: it is Aldo Novarese himself who takes care of its description in the general catalogue: the success of this iconic font is almost immediate.
For its digitization 53 years after its first publication as a transferable, we asked the expert type designer and profound connoisseur of the transferable world Dan Rhatigan, founder of Bijou Type, to think of a special version of Stop and the result is a font that brings with it the iconic "allure" of the dry transfer world:
"To create a new digital version of Stop for R41, it was important to draw inspiration from the dry transfer type they manufactured as much as possible. This new version of Stop is based on the films prepared for R41’s version, but then given many more characters than a sheet of transfer type could hold, including a wide variety of accented characters, symbols, and letters for the Cyrillc and Greek alphabets. R41 Stop is also filled with OpenType-enabled alternates for many of its letters, based on adaptations made over the years by designers and signmakers worldwide.Â
With the extended alphabets and the variations alike, this new version of Stop looks back to the possibilities of how it could have been used as dry transfer type. Whenever possible, new letters were assembled from Novarese’s original shapes — mixed, matched, sliced, and diced as a careful hand could have with nothing but sheets of dry transfer type, a burnisher, and a scalpel. The new forms are as minimal as the originals, providing a new range of possibilities that still hold to Novarese’s vision of impactful simplicity."
As suggested by the same original specimen designed by Aldo Novarese for the Nebiolo Foundry in Turin, Stop "Simplifies and enhances the graphic message" and making every word "a brand".
How to combine it? It is precisely Aldo Novarese who comes to our aid: whether it is Egizio, Bodoni or Magister, Stop harmonizes with any character!
Bijou Type is home to typefaces developed by Dan Rhatigan, an experienced typographer whose skills and sensibilities have been honed by years in the type industry working with clients big and small.
After managing type development for years at both Monotype and Adobe, Dan has established Bijou Type for his own work, informed by a decades-long career in various facets of typography. Bijou typefaces are the result of ideas that have simmered for quite a while, fed by Dan’s deep fascination with all things typographic, especially his interests in the histories of wood type and dry transfer type.