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Sonata is a display typeface designed by Rosa de Vera that is inspired by musical notation. The typeface explores the parallels of graphic design and musical composition, and how design can be a way of playing music through visual language.
Like many Asian children, Rosa was thrust upon music lessons at a young age– the classical piano. She has always been mesmerized by these graphic scores, this complex foreign language, the unique shapes and symbols that denote tone, pitch, and tempo– these scores became a world she could escape to. As she grew up to pursue design, this visual interest in musical notation remained and she continues to ask herself one core question: how can design and musical composition parallel one another as creative systems of expression?
In developing Sonata, the five-line staff served as a typographic framework, guiding the establishment of baselines and x-heights. Designing this typeface meant deconstructing traditional notation to identify structural similarities with typographic forms. Sonata invites playful experimentation with legibility and dynamism, challenging users to explore the boundaries where typography functions as both language and image.
