A single style typeface developed in collaboration with NODE Berlin Oslo for the identity of the annual contemporary music festival Ultima.

The typeface digitally reimagines Paul Renner's visionary sketches from 1924 for what later became known as Futura, the iconic design of pre-war Modernism. Celebrating the unpolished avantgarde attitude of its ancestor, it incorporates all alternates conceived by Renner, in some cases radically deviating from conventional letter structure. In slavishly subordinating the digital drawing to the brutal graphic force of hyper-geometric construction, this interpretation is amplifying rather than taming the subversive impact of Renner's original proposal.

In its modular and geometric precept, the initial sketches for Futura were formally and ideologically in line with the revolutionary conviction of other Modernist designers such as Herbert Bayer and Ivan Tschichold. Yet, the final metal type issued by the Bauer foundry in 1927 was heavily polished and bereft of these vicious peculiarities. For the sake of typographic conformity and consistency, the production department at Bauer had to apply various optical compensations and commercial considerations. The sole trace left of the envisioned radicalness were some of Renner's variant forms of a few lowercase characters, which Bauer would deliver "on special request".

Since Futura entered the typographic stage, it has seen a manifold of interpretations more or less akin to the avantgarde stance ideated by its designer. The Ultima typeface was initially replacing Architype Renner as a more radical rendition of the historical source; since the festival's 2022 instalment it got — in an act of evolutionary continuity — substituted by Arve Båtevik’s functionally superior LL Supreme.