Five Sunniva Aarhus Typefaces Ranked by the Wet Bergen Wall They Suit

The drawer is marked Never. Sunniva Aarhus pulls it open and a smell of cold paper comes out. Inside are forty-one sign drawings, each one approved by nobody.

She has turned five of them into typefaces. We took the five to Bergen's walls in a drizzle and ranked them. The walls did not vote.

5. Tormod Slab. Cut in 2019 for a ferry kiosk at Nordnes. The kiosk wanted something friendlier. Best wall: the blank gable at the top of Skostredet. It is a heavy face and the gable is a heavy wall. Together they look like a meeting.

4. Lunde Italic. Drawn for a stamp dealer on Strandgaten who changed his mind about having a name. Best wall: the side of the multi-storey car park. The slant suggests movement. The car park does not.

3. Fjellheim Condensed. Twelve centimetres wide per letter, nine metres tall. It was meant for a cinema that became a gym that became a gap. Best wall: the long brick flank on Nygårdsgaten. Rain runs down the stems and finishes the job.

2. Kolbein Soft. From a bakery sign, in a rounded face with a slightly worried bowl on every a. The bakery asked for something louder. Best wall: the plaster one behind the fish market, which is the colour of weak tea. Aarhus says the letters would hold up. She says it in the voice of someone who has checked.

1. Aarhus Blank. The only one she cut for no client at all. It started as a sign for a hotel that was never built above Torgallmenningen. The drawing is a single word, and the word was never confirmed. The face has no capital letters because the hotel had no name yet. Best wall: any of them, in any weather. It is the only face on the list that does not need the wall to be interesting.

She was asked whether it is odd to rank her own work against brickwork. She said the brickwork was here first.

The fonts sell for 40 kroner a weight. She says the buyers are mostly people who also own a very good umbrella.