Intel was facing a dilemma with their brand font. While it may seem like a minor problem for a global company focused on enabling technology for every person on Earth, the issue of fonts was actually costing them valuable resources, diluting the brand and resulting in disruption of their consumers’ digital experience.

Red Peak worked with Intel to evaluate their options for a font that could represent the brand globally, in all media. Ultimately, it was decided that designing a proprietary font from scratch, built for digital and to work in all scripts, all languages, worldwide, was the best approach.

Working with Dalton Maag, Red Peak evaluated best practices in font design. What we didn’t want was another font that would feel dated in another few years—as Bruno Maag says, a good font is like a classic Italian suit: it should never go out of style.

At the same time, we wanted the font to carry Intel’s unique personality, and we needed it to work across all media and technology, known and future. Design looked at sans vs. serif, humanist vs. gothic, and more.

With Intel, we landed on a humanist, sans typeface. But we couldn’t review this in a silo—before a design could be chosen, we had to prove it out over the global scripts that would be needed to speak to the world’s 7 billion inhabitants.

Drawing on international font consultants and Intel’s own base of global employees, the design for Intel Clear was chosen. It is inspired by the historical core of the Intel brand, the logo, while being designed to be future-ready.

Intel Clear has enabled the organization to easily distribute this critical brand asset and to speak to the world with one voice. They own a brand asset that works seamlessly across all languages and media. Additionally, Intel has saved significant resources previously needed to manage their font licensing.

Intel has, again, proven to be a leader in innovation by questioning business as usual, and created a better communication experience for all who come in contact with the brand.