Pledge uses Mauricio Reyes Binary font

Posted in: News

Each day millions of people of all ages in homes around the world use products from the Johnson & Johnson companies. These products keep babies clean and comfortable, hold allergy symptoms in check, help heal wounds, reduce fevers, relieve muscle pain and tame the urge to smoke.  A recent repositioning of many of the Johnson & Johnson brands led to rebranding of selected products. Johnson and Johnson chose ITC Binary, a font designed by Mauricio Reyes, to rebrand the Pledge line of cleaning products.

ITC Binary was designed by Mauricio Reyes in 1997 as a semi-serif font with a pronounced stroke contrast. A distinguishing characteristic of this font is that many of the lower case letters seem to be missing a small piece of their forms, either at the base line or x-height. Setting the letters together makes an impression of waviness which draws the attention of the reader. Binary is a reserved, elegant font which should be used in point sizes of 10 or larger and only in headlines and short to middle length texts.

When Reyes contacted the design team at Johnson and Johnson, they explained that ITC Binary was chosen for its expressive qualities and bold strokes. ITC Binary works well at small and large sizes. Most of the Pledge products are seen from the shelves, from a distance, therefore the chosen typeface must be bold and readable from a distance.  After reviewing multiple display fonts, the team selected ITC Binary as the best choice to redesign one of the world’s most trusted brands.