Created by James Glymph

Autolete captures the spirit of mid-20th-century Americana by immortalizing the remnants of a faded, rusted sign at the side of a humble, road-side convenience store.

The doors of Rankin’s Grocery, a quaint gas station in Anderson, SC, probably haven’t been opened in decades, shrouding it in mystery and intrigue. Autolete derives most of its inspiration from a lonely metal sign embedded in a tree next to the station. This sign lives in even more obscurity than the station itself, and features multiple layers of hand-painted lettering. With the terms “Auto Parts” and “Obsolete” overlapping each other on the sign (each one calling to different eras of the sign’s life) the name “Autolete” was created.

The main jumping-off point came from letters like A, R, and P, which were already featured on the sign. Numerals like 7, 9, and 0 were also present, and the typeface slowly but surely came to life in a new way. Certain forms on the sign led to the creation of a condensed style to work in tandem with the regular style. These two styles, as well as the inclusion of a rounded version of each, gave this type family its identity as a bubbly, friendly group of letters that harken back to hand-painted signage and to the station’s heyday—the mid-20th century.