How to design arrows

You know and love them, we certainly do. Arrows! Typographic arrow glyphs, to be precise. What’s really remarkable about arrows, like very very few symbols, they are truly universally recognised. You could go anywhere on Earth and set up a sign with an arrow on it and people will know that you mean to point them in a specific direction. “ Arrows have been guiding human behaviour, desires and decisions for millennia, long before typography existed,” Pangram Pangram’s Andrea Biggio tells us.

In fact, to prove as much, the oldest ever arrow to have been found was used to point the way to a brothel. Arrows also occupy a significant place in visual culture, both in terms of wayfinding (obviously) but also within identities too, just look at Glasgow Airport’s original logo, which went on to inspire Off White (I use inspire generously, you could argue it was simply stolen). There are also a lot more arrows than you may think, just look at the Unicode chart if you don’t believe us.

Arrow certainly appear simple – a line with a pointed end – however, when it comes to their inclusion within an entire typographic systemic, perhaps it’s not an uncomplicated as it seems. “Arrows are interesting because they act as a kind of mirror for the typeface,” Andrea says, “if you can design them coherently, it means the design has developed enough of an identity to extend beyond the alphabet.” As such, different designers tend to design arrows at different stages of the process in designing a font.

For Andrea, he draws them somewhere in the middle, as he says, “early enough to shape the design’s direction, but not before the fundamental traits of the alphabet are clearly defined.” For others in Pangram Pangram’s design team, like Francesca Bolognini or Caio Kondo, it comes much later in the game when the tone of the typefaces is mostly established. “That gives me a clearer framework to respond to,” Caio explains, “so the arrows feel consistent with the rest of the design rather than arbitrary.”

Francesca details arrows often are tackled at later stages because their design is derived from the logic flows of the existing glyphs – basing their form on decisions that are already made, such as optical feel, terminal style or stroke weight. “The exception is when arrows are conceptually central from the start,” Francesca adds, “as in wayfinding typefaces or brand-driven families where they're a core identity element.” At this stage, arrows are coordinated alongside letterforms rather than being subordinate to them.

The typeface that the arrows are designed for directly informs how complex they are to design, as Valerio Monopoli says, “sometimes their shape can be derived intuitively from the other characters in the font, and sometimes they require special attention and unique graphic solutions,” ultimately being neither particularly easy nor overly complex to design.

“The most challenging part is maintaining consistent stroke weight across different directions,” Caio details, “while still respecting typographic conventions,” such as the horizontal and diagonal elements which can often require optical adjustments to feel balanced amongst vertical strokes. “The more expressive or sophisticated the typeface, the more that detail and character carries through into the arrows too,” Andrea adds, “in that sense they’re not really a special case, they just reflect the overall level of refinement of the font.”

That means that the typographic genre makes a big impact on its complexity, whereby a straightforward, geometric grotesque could be rather simple, and a complex display serif may occupy the more labyrinthine end of the spectrum. “The arrow needs to absorb a much richer visual language while still functioning clearly as a symbol,” Francesca, importantly, notes, speaking to the more complex side of designing arrows.

In speaking to PP’s incredibly talented team, they all stress that, when designing arrows, the most important elements are their size and position. These factors directly influence the visual balance of the arrows alongside their upper and lowercase counterparts. “Arrows are rarely used in isolation, so it’s essential to consider how they interact with letters and other elements in real use,” Caio says, sometimes requiring more than one full set for perfect compatibility with both alphabets.

Whilst their position, size, weight, and proportion all need to befit whatever case they are sat next to, serving a very functional role, they also need to be visually appealing – a tricky balance.

“Adrian Frutiger once described the arrow with disarming simplicity,” Andrea recalls, “when two oblique lines come together to form an angle, the expression of a movement or direction is produced in some form.” This, for Andrea, is the best starting point when designing arrows. “Everything else follows from there.”

The conceptual and aesthetic influences of arrow design – generally speaking – follow the same thinking of the typeface they are a part of. “What makes them look different is that they’re one of the few glyphs where a line crosses a 90° angle,” Valerio points out, “so this intersection needs to be adjusted cleverly,” particularly in low contrast fonts.

So when the glyph, by its nature, could break some of the typeface’s design rules due to this feature, how do you keep it feeling cohesive? The answer, according to Caio, is balance. “With symbols and punctuation, it’s easy to either overdesign them, making them too expressive, or go too far in the opposite direction,” resulting in something that’s either, for one, generic and, two, lacking in any personality. “The goal is to find a balance,” Caio says, “the arrows should reinforce the concept of the typeface and elevate it, but without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.”

The form factor of arrows have not changed much since, well, forever, within the typography scene a lot has changed – namely accessibility. OpenType now allows intuitive input when typing -->, resulting in them automatically producing a → instead via contextual alternates. “Just a few years ago it was pretty rare to find arrows as part of the core character set of a font,” Francesca adds, “but they’re now considered essential.”

At Pangram Pangram, every typeface includes arrows, designed with care and unique to each family. With the launch of Neue York, this has never been more true. As its designer Andrea explains, due to the typeface being directly inspired by the layers of visual culture that make up NYC, “we ended up drawing alternate arrows inspired by the directional arrows found on the mosaic tiles of the subway.”

Now, the 48-style, 8-weight family has a comprehensive set of arrows alongside a supplementary expressive arrow, and even road-sign-style glyphs too. “It’s a good example of how the arrows can deepen the concept of a typeface,” Andrea ends, “rather than just echoing its formal qualities.”

For more on the fascinating history of arrows, check out Robert J. Finkel’s article on the subject.

Check out al of our arrows!

If you wish to see Pangram Pangram’s wonderful roster of arrows (and other glyphs too), get the Starter Pack or get your free trials and explore them on your own!