BLOOM

RegularMediumSemiboldBoldExtraboldBlack

A typeface in six weights inspired by the Bloomsbury group and the posters of the Omega Workshops

Between 1913 and 1919, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant ran the Omega Workshops from 33 Fitzroy Square in London, producing furniture, textiles, and screens, and painting signs by hand.

Bloom takes its cue from that painted lettering: open, lively letterforms with the swing of a brush, drawn in six weights, from Regular to Black.

Nothing
has to be true,
but everything
has to be interesting.
— Virginia Woolf
I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human ant-heap during the last fifty-seven years would be exactly the same if I had played ping-pong instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda.
— Leonard Woolf
I Have No Intention
of Confessing My
Sins or Defending
My Virtues
— Vanessa Bell

BLOOM!

They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles.

Six weights

Regular for reading, Medium and Semibold for emphasis and headlines, Bold and Extrabold for titles, and Black for posters and anything that should be seen from across the square.

  • Regular400
    Charleston farmhouse, painted walls and chintz covers
  • Medium500
    Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself
  • Semibold600
    Omega Workshops, 33 Fitzroy Square
  • Bold700
    Eminent Victorians & Howards End
  • Extrabold800
    Painted walls, screens and signs
  • Black900
    BLOOM! 33 Fitzroy Sq.
Weight
Art is
significant
deformity
— Roger Fry

The character set

Capitals, lowercase, small caps, figures, punctuation and accents in every weight. Pick a character to see it large.

B

Capital BU+0042

stylistic options

M—M

N—N

g—g

t—t

The Bloomsbury group

Writers, painters and thinkers who met in the houses of Bloomsbury, London, and argued about art, love and politics for the first half of the twentieth century.

Clive BellDesmond MacCarthy
Frances PartridgeRoger Fry
E.M. ForsterMolly MacCarthy
Dora CarringtonVanessa Bell
Duncan GrantLytton Strachey
Leonard WoolfVirginia Woolf
John Maynard Keynes
“We are, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast: — ‘THE TRUTH!’ at which Orlando woke. He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpeters pealed ‘TRUTH! TRUTH! TRUTH!’ We have no choice but confess — he was a woman.”
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography. 1928
For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself.
And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. 1927

“We should get all your disreputable and some of your aristocratic friends to come — and after dinner we should repair to Fitzroy Sq. where would be decorated furniture, painted walls etc. Then we should all get drunk and dance and kiss. Orders would flow in and the aristocrats would feel sure they were really in the thick of things.”

Vanessa Bell, 1910

To celebrate the release of Bloom, we’ve riso printed a very limited edition of a3 posters in splendid vibrant colours.  If You buy the whole typeface family via ilt You can participate in our competition and win a poster!  Contact us at Kid Collective and show the receipt and you just might be lucky.

Buy
Bloom

Painted signs, set in type

The Omega workshops sold its work under a hand-drawn Ω and letters that looked painted rather than printed. Bloom keeps that warmth in a typeface you can set at any size, from a caption to a shopfront.