New Custom Type for Sun Bum®
with Alright Studio

In early 2025, Alright Studio had begun redesigning Sun Bum’s website from top to bottom. Along the way, they devised a clever idea of building a typeface that combined Sun Bum’s existing sans serif with their punchy, 70s style swash capitals that were currently being built by hand. Turning typographic treatments into a functioning typeface would be a big undertaking, and they got in touch with me to help formalize the initial proposal.

As we talked out how this would realistically work, we arrived to the conclusion that it was time to propose a new, fully custom typeface. This new typeface would be exclusive to Sun Bum, with the purpose of visually expressing their tone of voice, and unifying their messaging across advertising, packaging, and retail and online shopping experiences.

Sun bum was eager to get started, and so we were off to the races almost immediately. We had four months to design, test, and produce Sonny, a superfamily of fonts: Five weights in three widths, with italics. The Normal width is used most often for setting text in Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, and Black. Extended and Condensed widths complete the superfamily’s range, providing additional styles for when Sonny needs to take up a little more, or a little less space in a given layout. The Italics are structured in a simple, oblique style, opting to provide emphasis to the upright. We crafted Sonny Inked as well: a softer, rounded version of Sonny with an alternate swash capitals feature. All Sonny families are built with language support exceeding Adobe Latin 3, and also include support for modern Greek.

As a neo-grotesque, Sonny is a clean, modern sans-serif. It has a slightly higher than expected contrast, circular dots and punctuation, and a distinct, two-story g. These elements combine to give Sonny its Cali-cool swagger. Sonny Inked is intended for large, display style settings, and its swash capitals are easily accessible via opentype.

All Sonny families also have alternates for a and l, and a special feature that can substitute the glyphs O, o, and period for optically-sized versions of Sun Bum’s iconic mascot, Sonny. The Sun Bum team isn’t afraid to have some fun with their typography and mix things up every now and then. These alternates were once created manually on an illustrator artboard. Now, they’re just a few clicks away.

Sonny’s language support covers most all European languages. This allows Sun Bum to reach further in their marketing than they previously could. With the addition of modern Greek, Sonny is now also ready to take on the Agean sunshine. We worked with Irene Vlachou, an incredibly talented type designer and expert on the Greek alphabet, to ensure that Sonny’s Greek support is not only formally correct, but carries a complimentary tone of voice, and most importantly, is legible to Greek readers in every style.

We’re very proud to see all sorts of weights, widths, and styles of Sonny being put to use on Sun Bum’s website. This project started from a web prompt, and then evolved into a matter of branding. Sonny does a lot of work with enough personality, and Sonny Inked provides the perfect amount of fuzz, kind of like the feeling you get from an afternoon under the California sunhine.

From the start, our plan was to support the Sun Bum team in doing what they do best. Relying on Sonny not only makes their jobs easier, but more fun in the process. What makes Sun Bum such a successful brand is their willingness to engage with their customers (cult followers?), provide a good product, and most importantly, a good time. We like to think that Sonny is now part of that package. It’s already used throughout their web experience, social, and video platforms, and we can expect to see Sonny on future product packaging, merch, advertising … Pretty much, anywhere you’ll see Sun Bum, you’ll be reading Sonny. Good times abound. Trust the bum.