< lab
Eastman · direction · toronto 15 · type
GARAJE
MONTAGU
AGRANDIR

Three faces, three jobs. The system holds because each one owns a size band and never crosses it — the shout, the voice, and the record. Everything below is measured from the font files rather than eyeballed.

01 · the bands who owns what
D1 shout Circle Man44 – 150 px
D2 voice a film about repetition20 – 40 px
D3 record Direction M. Eastman · 2026 · 1:19 – 18 px

Nothing is set between 18 and 20. That gap is the handoff: if a thing is too small for Montagu it becomes Agrandir, and it never sits in between looking like a mistake.

02 · why they agree x-height 505 / 518
HANDhandhand x-height cap height

Montagu and Agrandir differ by 2.6% in x-height, which is below the threshold where the eye reads a size difference — so they set together at the same px with no correction. Garaje is unicase: its lowercase is drawn at cap height, so caps are not a style choice, they are the only setting where the face behaves.

03 · tracking the opposite of squish
0CIRCLE MAN
.025CIRCLE MAN
.045 ←CIRCLE MAN
.075CIRCLE MAN
.12CIRCLE MAN

A black unicase closes up fast — at zero the counters start fighting. 0.045em opens it without the letters drifting apart into a logo. Past 0.075 it stops being a word and becomes a sign, which is a different and louder thing. The rule scales inversely: the bigger it is set, the less it needs.

04 · in situ the three doing their jobs
01 — commercial
CIRCLE MAN
a short film about going round again
directionM. Eastman
year2026
format1:1 · 61 sec
agencyThe Deli
05 · the floors where each face gives up
montagu at 28comfortable
montagu at 20the floor
montagu at 14past it — hairlines go
Agrandir at 16roomy
Agrandir at 11index rows
AGRANDIR AT 9labels, tracked hard

Montagu is a high-contrast slab, so what fails first is the thin stroke, not the shape. Below 20 the hairlines drop out and the bold reads as patchy. Agrandir has almost no modulation, which is why it survives all the way down to 9 — and why it does every small job on the site.

measured from the binaries 2026 / 09 / 07