Sans Contrasted Ilje 3 is a bold, normal width, very high contrast, upright, tall x-height font.
Keywords: headlines, posters, logotypes, magazine titles, packaging, art deco, editorial, fashion, theatrical, stylized, display impact, deco revival, geometric style, branding voice, geometric, modular, stencil-like, sharp, cinematic.
A stylized sans built from geometric, almost modular parts, with dramatic thick–thin interplay and frequent vertical slabs paired with hairline joins. Curves often resolve into near-perfect circles or half-circles, while many counters and bowls are cut away or interrupted, creating a stencil-like, split-form construction. Terminals are predominantly flat and blunt, and diagonals appear as crisp wedges (notably in V/W/X/Y/Z), reinforcing a sharp, graphic rhythm. The lowercase maintains a large, prominent x-height with simplified, blocky stems and selectively thinned connections that give the text a patterned, alternating light/dark texture.
Best suited to display settings where its segmented geometry and strong light/dark patterning can read cleanly: headlines, posters, magazine mastheads, branding marks, and packaging. It can work for short bursts of text or pull quotes when generous spacing and size help preserve the internal cut details.
The overall tone is glamorous and graphic, evoking Art Deco signage and high-style editorial display. The deliberate cut-ins and segmented bowls add a theatrical, poster-like energy that feels designed to be noticed rather than to disappear into body copy.
The letterforms appear intentionally engineered to fuse modernist geometry with a decorative, high-contrast display sensibility, prioritizing a striking silhouette and rhythmic black shapes. The split strokes and reduced joins suggest a deliberate effort to create a memorable, era-referential voice for branding and titling.
The design’s signature is its interrupted strokes and partial bowls (e.g., circular forms that read as filled semicircles with a thin return), which creates strong word-shape contrast and a distinctive “mask” effect in running text. Numerals share the same split, geometric logic, with bold massing and selective hairline detailing that keeps the set visually consistent.