About the Typeface, Nain Freezer Sans

Designer: Mark Bennett

This typeface was developed specifically for Sikumit Aisimajugut. As an Inuk designer, I wanted the typographic language of the exhibition to emerge from a vernacular built environment. It is drawn from hand-painted lettering originally found as part of the architecture in Nain, Nunatsiavut’s northernmost permanent settlement.

Rather than originating from a graphic archive, the original lettering comes from a working building. It appeared on the exterior of Nain’s fish plant in the early 1970s and reads "Nain’s Freezer” in Inuttitut. The text is utilitarian, direct, and shaped by climate, labour, and material constraints. Painted onto industrial architecture, the text functions less as graphic design and more as an extension of the building itself—weathered, practical, and embedded in daily life. By developing it into a full set of letters and re-painting it onto the gallery wall, I wanted to carry this material specificity into the gallery space connecting to the greater themes of the exhibition.

The lettering is documented in Labrador North (1973), a documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada and directed by Roger Hart. The film documents the relocation of Labrador Inuit communities and the resulting disruptions to cultural, spatial, and architectural practices. In this context, the fish plant lettering becomes more than signage—it is a trace of Inuit presence, labour, and adaptation following displacement and re-imagination. The typeface acts as a spatial artifact, connecting language, building surfaces, and lived experience. Translation was provided by Katie Winters.