Reset

Back to Journal

Written by Reset Type Studio | 08-08-2025

Catalyst Sans: case study

Collaborated with Pentagram on the design and development of a custom typeface for General Catalyst, one of the world’s leading venture capital firms.

“General Catalyst approached Pentagram as they were expanding their presence in Europe and India and focusing on fundamental problems in critical industries like healthcare, industrials, energy, and defense. They brought Venture Beyond to life with a unified visual and verbal identity system. At its core is a reimagined logo – based on an exponent – and custom typeface, Catalyst Sans, designed to combine dynamism and clarity”. 
Pentagram

Project: Custom Font

Client: Pentagram, NY

Year: 2024

Pentagram invited us to help develop Catalyst Sans, a custom font they had already designed with a strong foundation. Working closely with their team, we refined, expanded, and engineered it into a robust, professional-grade type family.

The original design featured a mix of narrow and wide letterforms. We split the family into two primary masters: Narrow and Extended, and developed a third Mix style that blended both rhythms into a cohesive voice. 

Across all three styles, we expanded the character set with over 200 additional glyphs, enabling support for more than 160 Latin-based languages. We also included a wide range of functional glyphs: diacritics, alternates, mathematical symbols, superiors, inferiors, arrows, and circled numbers. Given the client's focus on global finance and innovation, we designed over 20 monetary and crypto currency symbols.

To ensure seamless performance across brand, web, UI, and editorial applications, we completed the project with font engineering, kerning, hinting, and production work for both screen and print environments.

CREDITS:

Client: Pentagram, New York
Partner: Natasha Jen
Project team: Jisung Park, Alex Hulme, Ian Collins, Justin Zhang, Jennifer Bahng, Steven Merenda, Jinyoung Lee, Kate Weimer, Edgar Ferrer, Dillon Diatlo, Tamara McKenna, John Sampson, Laiqa Mohid, Madeleine Golden.
Collaborators: Kyle Barron-Cohen (strategy), Eva Green (strategy), Frank LaRocca (web development), Henrique Gusso (collage tool).
Images: Pentagram
Back to Journal