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Ronnie Alley

MFA in Graphic Design - 2 Yr Path — Graduate Graphic Design
Course:
Font Design 1 and 2
Faculty:
Greg Lindy
Term:
2025 Fall

Ralley Sans

Intentionally crafted with the utility of a grotesk, paired with enough gusto to leave an impression, I designed this font family to reflect my own identity. Hardworking, lighthearted, and just serious enough to keep it business casual. 

View the full project case study HERE.

Process:

When beginning this project, I didn’t want to design just another sans serif. I set out to create a typeface I would actually use. I wanted to create a font that could serve as a workhorse for my personal brand while standing apart from the many existing grotesk sans serifs. Over twenty weeks, I iterated between refining individual letterforms and evaluating the system as a whole, eventually developing a four-weight type family.

Learning Outcomes:

I’ve always loved type, but designing my own typeface from scratch gave me an entirely new appreciation for the craft. Studying the micro-details of each letterform and seeing how they influence the tone and performance of the full system changed the way I look at typography.

Project Website:
https://ronniealleydesign.com/projects/ralley-sans
Tags:
Advertising,
Publication Design,
Typography
Running with the business casual theme, all the typesetting examples utilize corporate jargon.
Character by character, each and every form was finessed week by week.
In designing the specimen book, I leaned even more into the business-casual personality that had developed within the typeface, filling spreads with corporate jargon and post-it-yellow accents as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the font’s quirky yet utilitarian nature.
As a final showcase of the font family’s capabilities, I developed a series of posters to launch Ralley Sans into the world. Through these posters, I aimed to highlight the rhythm of the letterforms, the tonal range across weights, and the distinct character of the family as a whole.