Punchcut Logo
2004

Punchcut is an interface design company specializing in designing mobile products and services. The name Punchcut refers to a typographic production process that dates back to the early years of the printing press when a letterform was carved in steel and then punched into a copper mold to cast moveable type. Punchcut’s co-founder Jared Benson is a typography aficionado and created the popular online forum Typophile.com in 2000 where members discussed all things type. His love of typographic history lead him to call his multimedia design firm Punchcut in honor of the beginning of moveable type in the late 1400s.

Benson asked Dresser Johnson to design a logo that is modern, yet harked back to the era of carving and casting letters in metal. We created a modern sans serif logo with unique carved sections known as ink traps. This technique was first used in metal typography when printing at small sizes. The ink-trap styling was designed to prevent printing inks from spreading outside the character’s borders by allowing the ink to fill into the precise traps creating a sharp and more legible glyph at small sizes.