A pedantic recreation of the OMNI Magazine display typeface.
What do I mean by "pedantic?" Basically, as closely as possible I want to be able to typeset headers and the masthead from OMNI Magazine without resorting to any kerning adjustments. Simply type and get a correct result. The original was manually typeset for years and variations exist, so "accuracy" is a fuzzy target. I will continue to tweak the font as resources become available to verify/deny design decisions. That said, I think these animations reveal that I'm pretty close.
Typing a column title in lowercase, default kerning.
Typing the masthead in uppercase, default kerning.
The font is provided in OpenType .otf and TrueType .ttf files. The original Affinity Designer file used to draw the vector outlines is included as the .afdesign file. The FontForge project used to build the installable font files is included as the .sfd file. I use the .otf file on Windows, personally. The .ttf file is what I use in classic Macintosh System 7.5.5 for research projects (see blog information at the end of this readme).
This font was based on relatively low-resolution scans. Fine detail was difficult, if not impossible, to make out in many cases. I went through every single issue of OMNI's print run looking for examples of missing glyphs and found more than expected.
If it wasn't in print I didn't include it, with one exception.
I could not find a single example of the letter Z in 15 years of magazines. It's possible I overlooked something, but I paced myself in my research and really gave it due diligence. There was an Italian version of OMNI that used a Z but the other letterforms looked altered from the original, so I only relied on it for inspiration.
My research turned up a great number of glyphs I never expected to see. All numerals eventually show up in an issue in the 90s (IIRC) in a story about "13 Ways to Increase Your Psychic Ability," or some such junk. (The magazine really takes a hard fall over the years). As well I found useful punctuation like . , : $ and ( )
You should be able to just "set it and forget it" with typing in OMNI-style headers. As well, the uppercase is kerned specifically to type a perfect masthead without fuss.
Basically, lowercase handles most of the typesetting needs for an issue. Uppercase holds variants I discovered in the archives (check out the variants of S for example), as well as slightly altered letterforms/kerning for masthead purposes. I think, but am not 100% sure, that the letterforms in the masthead are slightly different than the letterforms in the column headers, and this font captures those differences.
The Z is my own design, and I am very open to suggestions on making it better. I think it follows the general feel and philosophy of the other characters, but if someone can make a good case why the shape should be different, I'm all ears.
The numerals may be controversal. They are absolutely taken from the print magazine, but the width of the numerals fluctuated throughout OMNI's print run. Sometimes it was a more compact, sometimes it was the width of the letters. Finally, after some experimentation, I opted for the compact forms. Specifically, I thought they looked better set that way, and they also distinguish from the letters more sharply. A G and a 6 were almost indistinguishable without this sizing difference.
The lowercase set contains the typical characters and kerning from the bulk of the print run. You can see this in column headers like "EXPLORATIONS" and "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE".
Over the years, I saw that some letterforms were altered to remove the twisty-turny curves. In the full sample shown above, look at the letters B K P R S Y and :
The uppercase set contains these alternates; everything else is identical to the lowercase set.
In addition to the normal punctuation and alphanumerics, I've included special symbols. The "CONTINUUM" column would use a kind of hexagonal honeycomb pattern to number the pages. These are mostly found in the SHIFT-NUMBER row (see full set above).
The column "ANTIMATTER" used an atomic symbol which is here under the *.
There is a small "infinity sign?" marker used to denote the end of articles. This symbol is under the &
I need ultra-high quality scans of the typeface from the actual print magazine. I had heard that the Amazon digital scans were of high quality, but I didn't find that to be true. Perhaps in Japan we're blocked from receiving a better quality product that is available in the United States? I don't know.
Regardless, the best would be maximum possible resolution flat-bed scans of the headers and drop caps for the regular monthly columns. I will suck it up myself and buy some issues.
The main problem is making out precise curves and especially the inner shapes of the letterforms. The scans I have access to are a little warped, so I am not 100% confident that the letters are sized precisely. It may also be an artifact of the original analog typesetting process that introduced slight deformations from time to time.
While working on this, I've come to believe the typeface was custom to the magazine. I say this because it really looked like one-off characters were hand-built without quite the same care as the letterforms in column headers.
For example, early in the print run there is a Christmas ad doing a "countdown" and the numerals are displayed there for the first (?) time. To be quite frank, they look bad. They don't look nearly as polished as the alphabet, and they're not seen again for years. I think they just threw something together for a one-off holiday house ad.
This forced me to wonder, if the typeface were from a foundry why wouldn't they have had access to the numerals? It struck me, there were no numerals because the typeface is very likely unique to the magazine. They built what they needed, when they needed it.
Punctuation is similarly a little slap-dash. A period (almost never used) honestly looks to me like they just cut a square of point-tape off and stuck it in place.
Later, after the digital typesetting revolution, we see more stability in these one-off forms. The numerals look well-formed and show good consistency with the rest of the typeface. Around this time we also see a one-time alteration of the masthead, giving it a thick, white outline in the July 1990 issue. That would be difficult to do by hand. I think this indicates access to a digital masthead, which likely also means the full font was eventually digitized.
I believe there is a 3 1/2" disk out there somewhere with the real, official OMNI font.
"OMNI Masthead" and "Saved by Zero" appear to have approached the design from different angles. "OMNI Masthead", judging from its font outlines, exhibits a kind of auto-trace quality. The characters are generally the right shape and width, but have an impreciseness that runs counter to the "pedantic" goals of this project.
"Saved by Zero" shows more care in the creation of its letterforms, but I think I'd classify that as being "inspired by OMNI" more so than the slavish recreation I'm attempting. It also includes true lower-case, all of which were the brainchild of the font's creator, not anything which actually appeared in OMNI Magazine. The same goes for punctuation and numerals, which makes it a far more complete font, but again, the goal is different than mine.
Another font attempt was made for an Adidas ad campaign, which decided to print a full issue of OMNI to sell a new line of sneakers called Originals ZX 5K BOOST. The typeface was redrawn by Gonzalo Hergueta and also takes liberties with the font shapes.
Most distressingly, for my needs, is the X is the Adidas ZX logo, and that simply will not stand. Hergueta mentions, "For this project the original back catalog of OMNI was referenced for the layouts, while a full redraw and digitalization of OMNI's iconic display typography was performed, resulting in a yet-to-be-released typeface." The layouts are easy enough to measure and duplicate, but I'm sorry to inform Hergueta that numerals and letterforms he created from his own imagination (probably just didn't find them in the research), were available as real, ink-on-paper references in the print run of the magazine, but finding those requires checking every single page of every single issue.
What kind of a mad-man would attempt that?! (me. it was me.)
I created this font before starting my blog, Stone Tools, but found a nice way to work it into the blog in March 2026. The article, "Aldus PageMaker on the Apple Macintosh" takes a tour through PageMaker 5 on a Macintosh running System 7.5.5. In there, I used this font to rebuild ficticious OMNI Magazine elements, like the cover, article spreads, and monthly column mockups. If you're interested in computing and this kind of retro stuff, you might like the blog overall. https://stonetools.ghost.io