I released Marianas on July 13, 2006, for a video game about the Pacific Air War, where it was used as part of the in-game design. My goal was to merge the sleek geometry of 1920s Art Deco with the utilitarian aesthetic of 1940s military lettering. Instead of leaning into the elegance that often defines Art Deco, I lowered the contrast between thick and thin strokes and replaced graceful counters with crude, rectangular ones. Even details like the stroke weights in the ‘N’ were made deliberately awkward, giving the typeface a homespun quality, as if it had been drawn by an inexperienced designer.

The result was a hybrid of Art Deco structure and wartime functionality, stripped of ornament and closer to a brutalist interpretation of the style. It was conceived specifically for the game it accompanied, not as a general-purpose display face, and I have never seen it used in notable projects outside of that context.

On June 18, 2021, I revised Marianas to improve its performance and compatibility. I removed deprecated characters, corrected spacing issues, and adjusted metrics, leaving the visual identity unchanged. In the 2020s, I shifted the way I presented Marianas: originally positioned as a World War II–themed font, I reconsidered that angle since the design didn’t actually reflect authentic wartime lettering. I reframed it as having more of a tropical island theme, which better suited its casual, rough-hewn look. It remains a paid release.