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Continuing the Communist theme that began with the Stalinist inspired font Newspeak we are releasing Doublethink. Like Newspeak, this piece takes its name from the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Doublethink refers to the power of holding two contradictory beliefs, simultaneously, in one's mind and accepting both of them.

The design of this piece was observed on a store while on a trip to Croatia some years ago. Vinko Ozic-Pajic drew the original logo for the shops of the then state-owned clothes company Standard Konfekcija in the 1960s in Yugoslavia. To keep the logo ‘fluid’ Vinko's design was constructed by laying a piece of rope into the various letterforms needed. This experimental design has now been reinterpreted with the construction of a two weight typeface - Doublethink Medium and Doublethink Bold Inline.

Standard Konfekcija itself started off as a military fabric company and then became the first fashion brand in Communist Yugoslavia. It is famous for having the first ever plastic carrier bag in the country - at the time this was a much coveted item. It was also highly unusual for its use of orange as its main colour, rather than the officially approved red. The shops no longer exist, having all been closed around 2001, after the fall of Communism.

There are not many that have mourned the passing of Communism, but Virusfonts can't help feeling that a huge amount of valuable visual culture has been thrown away with everything else. So this is one release of many in which we are plan to highlight these ‘lost’ fonts.

regards,
Virus