Hardcore
Public Type · Shiva Nallaperumal
A stencil display typeface by Shiva Nallaperumal, shaped by distorted South Asian signage, late Soviet ephemera and underground rave culture, offered in Bold and Stencil variants with distinct construction logics.
About
Hardcore began as a masthead concept and grew into a typeface fusing the stretched and squeezed letterforms of post-DTP shop signage across India with the gritty visual language of Cold War-era brutalist architecture and underground music posters. The Bold style applies optical corrections for legibility, while the Stencil style uses strict mathematical geometry to keep forms consistent when cut. Both share the same underlying character but diverge in how they resolve the stencil break.
Classification
A display typeface with stencil and bold variants, drawing on distorted vernacular signage and brutalist/rave poster aesthetics. Its squared, compressed forms and stencil cut place it firmly in the techno/display category.