The Columbia Gorgeous typeface and font emerged from the re-branding of our company, Madison Design to Madison Design Company (for web domain reasons). We thought that with the added word, “Company,” it seemed to call for a slightly retro vibe, maybe with the abbreviation, “Co.,” in place of the full word. For my muse, I looked at the modern, crispness of Gotham and mashed it up with the geometric typefaces, Futura and Century Gothic— in the latter case it mostly informed the lighter weight. I wanted something that looked like it might be on the glass at the street level of a downtown office building in Manhattan in the 1930s while at the same time look at home in a high quality brand today.
