LA28 Typography System: How Four Custom Fonts Capture the Soul of Los Angeles
When Los Angeles last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1984, the typography was straightforward. Designers relied on a single italic sans-serif font—Univers 66—for the official logotype, paired with a blocky stencil-style “LA84” mark used primarily on venue signs and urban wayfinding. It was clean, functional, and decidedly of its era.
Fast forward more than four decades. The 2028 Los Angeles Games are taking a radically different approach to type. Instead of one or two fonts, the LA28 brand and design system—developed by Koto Studios—comprises an entire bespoke four-font family, simply named LA28. The typefaces draw inspiration from the city’s strip mall signage, hand-painted street lettering, and the eclectic visual culture that defines Los Angeles today.
This isn’t just a cosmetic upgrade. It’s a strategic brand decision that mirrors the city’s evolution from a homogeneous identity to a vibrant, multicultural mosaic. Let’s break down what these four fonts are, why they matter, and what this typographic system says about the future of Olympic design.
The Four Faces of LA28 Typography
The LA28 typeface family isn’t a single font with a few variations. It’s a complete typographic ecosystem, with each style designed for a specific purpose and personality. According to Geoff Engelhardt, head of brand design for LA28, “Each one has a distinct personality and purpose within the system.” Together, they represent a more eclectic approach to Olympic typography than we’ve seen in decades past.
1. LA28 Display: The Street Sign Connection
LA28 Display is the most immediately recognizable font in the family. Its design is directly inspired by the block lettering found on Los Angeles’ original city street signs—the classic green signs with white text that have guided Angelenos (and tourists) for generations.
This font is built for specific use cases: numerals, captions, and wayfinding. Think of the numbers on event venues, directional signs in Olympic parks, or the date markers on merchandise. It’s bold, geometric, and utilitarian—perfect for communicating critical information at speed and scale.
The inspiration is deliberate. “We wanted the typography to feel like it could only belong to Los Angeles,” Engelhardt explains. By grounding the Display style in a visual language that locals instantly recognize, the design team anchors the entire brand in the physical reality of the city.
2. LA28 Sans: Clarity for the Masses
The Sans style within the LA28 family is designed for one primary goal: maximum readability. Built with clarity, legibility, and accessibility in mind, this font will appear in text-heavy applications—program guides, digital interfaces, and informational signage.
Don’t mistake its simplicity for a lack of character. LA28 Sans incorporates subtle design cues from the city’s hand-lettered storefronts and street murals, ensuring it feels organic to Los Angeles even when used for dense copy. The clean lines and open letterforms make it suitable for everything from large-format printed materials to mobile app screens.
This is the workhorse font of the system. When visitors need to confirm event times, navigate transportation routes, or read event descriptions, they’ll encounter LA28 Sans.
3. LA28 Serif: The Accessible Workhorse
Complementing the Sans style is LA28 Serif, a serif typeface built for heavy copy applications. Like its sans-serif counterpart, LA28 Serif is fully ADA compliant, meeting the accessibility requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
This is a deliberate inclusion. Typography isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about ensuring that every visitor, regardless of ability, can navigate the Games with ease. The Serif style provides visual variety for editorial content, news briefings, and sponsor materials while maintaining the same level of legibility as the Sans.
Together, LA28 Sans and LA28 Serif form a complementary pair. They allow designers to create contrast within publications and digital content without sacrificing accessibility.
4. LA28 Super: Expressive and Unforgettable
If LA28 Sans is the responsible sibling, LA28 Super is the wild child. This charismatic, stylized calligraphy-style font is reserved for big moments and large-scale impact—think billboards, hero graphics, and brand launch collateral.
LA28 Super’s letterforms are a study in contrasts: sharp angles meet smooth curves, simple shapes intersect with distinctive flourishes. It’s the font that commands attention. One striking example of Super in action is a billboard previewing the LA28 brand that reads “Bienvenidos” (Spanish for “Welcome”)—a nod to the city’s rich Latinx heritage.
This is the emotional anchor of the typographic system. Where the other fonts handle information, LA28 Super handles inspiration. It’s the font you see first on promotional materials and the one that lingers in memory.
Why Four Fonts Instead of One?
The decision to build a four-font typographic system is a departure from recent Olympic branding conventions. Previous Games often relied on a single custom typeface with simple weight variations—clean, controlled, and consistent. LA28 breaks that mold intentionally.
According to Engelhardt, the goal isn’t to create a literal depiction of Los Angeles. Instead, the design team aimed to “capture the feeling of Los Angeles.” Four distinct fonts allow the brand to shift tone and personality depending on context. A stadium directional sign requires the clarity of Display. A digital event schedule needs the readability of Sans. A long-form sponsor announcement benefits from Serif’s professionalism. And a viral social media campaign deserves Super’s expressive energy.
This approach reflects the complexity of the city itself. Los Angeles isn’t a single story—it’s dozens of neighborhoods, hundreds of cultures, and thousands of visual languages layered on top of each other. The typographic system mirrors that diversity.
Inspiration Rooted in Street-Level Culture
The source material for the LA28 fonts didn’t come from a design textbook or a corporate branding manual. It came from the streets. Koto Studios’ designers studied the visual vernacular of Los Angeles storefronts: the hand-painted signs on mom-and-pop shops, the neon lettering on vintage motels, the spray-painted murals on warehouse walls.
“There’s a whole visual culture living on the streets of Los Angeles, in the storefronts, the hand-lettered murals, the block lettering on original street signs, and we wanted to honor that rather than import something that felt foreign to the city,” says Ric, as quoted in the original source.
This approach is both authentic and strategic. By grounding the typography in local visual culture, LA28 ensures its brand identity feels organic. Visitors arriving in 2028 won’t see a generic Olympic aesthetic imposed on Los Angeles—they’ll see a design system that emerges from the city’s own visual DNA.
Accessibility Meets Expression
One of the most notable aspects of the LA28 typography system is its commitment to accessibility. Both LA28 Sans and LA28 Serif are ADA compliant, meaning they meet the accessibility requirements mandated by the Americans With Disabilities Act.
This has real-world implications. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in four Americans has a disability that affects major life activities. For large-scale events like the Olympics, ensuring that signage, digital platforms, and printed materials are legible for all visitors isn’t just good design—it’s a legal and ethical obligation.
The inclusion of ADA-compliant fonts also sends a broader message about the values of the LA28 Games. Accessibility isn’t an afterthought; it’s a core design principle woven into the brand from day one.
What This Typographic System Says About the Future of Olympic Design
Historically, Olympic typography has been conservative. The Games are a global broadcast event, and brand consistency across dozens of cultures and languages requires discipline. Stray too far from simplicity, and you risk alienating viewers.
But the 2020s have seen a shift. Tokyo 2020 introduced a custom typeface inspired by traditional Japanese calligraphy. Paris 2024 is leaning into Art Deco elegance. And now LA28 is embracing the messy, vibrant, hand-crafted energy of Los Angeles street culture.
This evolution reflects a broader trend in global branding: authenticity over polish. Audiences—especially younger demographics—are drawn to brands that feel genuine rather than manufactured. A typographic system inspired by strip mall signage isn’t “clean” in the traditional corporate sense, but it’s real. It tells a story about the city, its people, and their creative expression.
The LA28 typeface family suggests that future Olympic branding may continue this trajectory. Rather than packaging host cities into neatly branded boxes, designers will increasingly let the raw character of each location shape the visual identity.
Implementation Challenges and Opportunities
Building a four-font typographic system sounds impressive, but implementation at Olympic scale is a logistical challenge. These fonts will appear on:
- Stadium signage across dozens of venues
- Digital platforms accessed by millions of visitors
- Merchandise sold worldwide
- Printed materials in multiple languages
- Television and streaming graphics
- Transportation signage across the LA metro area
Each application has unique requirements. Wayfinding needs fonts that differentiate similar characters (like “1” and “I” or “0” and “O”). Digital screens require fonts that render cleanly at small sizes. Printed materials need fonts that hold up under varied paper qualities.
The LA28 typographic system had to account for all these edge cases. With four distinct font families, designers can optimize each style for its specific environment without compromising brand cohesion.
The Role of Custom Fonts in Brand Differentiation
For B2B and SaaS leaders reading this, there’s a lesson in the LA28 approach to typography. Custom fonts are expensive and time-consuming to develop. But they offer something stock fonts can’t: proprietary identity.
When a brand creates its own typeface, no competitor can borrow that visual language. It becomes a unique asset that reinforces brand recall. LA28 can’t be accidentally confused with Paris 2024 or Brisbane 2032 because the fonts themselves are distinctly Los Angeles.
The same principle applies in business. A custom font system communicates that a company cares about design, consistency, and experience. It signals maturity and attention to detail.
Bottom Line: Typography as Storytelling
The LA28 typography system is more than a design decision—it’s a narrative tool. Four fonts, each with a distinct personality, work together to tell the story of Los Angeles: a city of contrasts, creativity, and community.
The Display style echoes the functional signage that helps Angelenos navigate. The Sans style provides the clarity of information. The Serif style carries the weight of editorial content. And the Super style captures the expressive soul of a city that never stops reinventing itself.
As Engelhardt puts it, the goal was to create typography that “feels like it could only belong to Los Angeles.” By looking to the city’s streets, murals, and storefronts, Koto Studios achieved exactly that.
When the world tunes in for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, they won’t just see athletes competing. They’ll see a visual identity that honors the city’s past, embraces its present, and points toward its future—one custom font at a time.