Kantoor

Kantoor is a modular, squarish display typeface designed by Ramiro Espinoza, inspired by a handsome vintage sign for the Thalia pharmacy in Vienna. The design caught Espinoza’s eye in Ghostletters Vienna: Traces of Urban Identity, the book by Tom Koch documenting the fading typographic heritage of the city. The Thalia sign, with its rigid geometry and confident simplicity, stood out as a rare example of functional yet expressive lettering.
Removed from its original location on Thaliastraße in 2013, the sign now lives on as part of the collection at the MAK Design Laboratory (Museum of Applied Arts). With Kantoor, Espinoza transforms this forgotten urban relic into a complete typeface—modular, minimal, and full of quiet authority.
Ideal for impactful signage, branding, posters, museum communication, websites, computer games, packaging, toys, and mass-produced goods, Kantoor brings a piece of Vienna’s mid-century commercial character into the digital age. Now available through Brutal Types, it invites designers to work with a voice shaped by urban memory and typographic restraint.