Digital Font, Infini, 2014–2015

Infini is a digital sans-serif typeface created by Sandrine Nugue and commissioned by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP). CNAP’s commission aimed to highlight the creative act involved in typeface design, underscoring that fonts aren’t merely software available on a computer but an area of flourishing creative practice. Infini is made freely available under the Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0 for download and use in personal or commercial projects.


With Infini, Nugue sought to bridge centuries of writing and typography in a digital typeface, inspired by ancient Greek text and monumental Roman capitals found on chiseled stone inscriptions. The design pays tribute to the unequal proportions, concave shapes, and the ligatures of those incised letters. There are three styles, as described by Nugue: "Roman—bristly in display sizes, supple for text; Italic—faithful partner for the roman, yet independent; Bold—oversized to overshadow its neighbors." She designed a robust set of ligatures inspired by those dating to antiquity, considering how letters could be more like an image to shift a reader’s expectation for typography. In addition, she created a set of 26 pictograms as part of the typeface family, one for each letter of the alphabet, as a nod to the origins of writing. Each pictogram is recognizable as a Latin letter to remain legible yet catches a reader’s attention in a field of text. Infini captures the hand and craft of type design in a digital font that intimates the infinite, connecting the ancient with the contemporary.

Digital Font, Infini, 2014–2015; Designed by Sandrine Nugue ((French, b. 1985)); Made for Centre National des Arts Plastiques; digital font; Collected from the public domain by Cooper Hewitt in collaboration with the designer; 2024-24-1-1/8