Monash Display

Developed for the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux in northern France, the Monash typeface was created in close collaboration with typographer Dan Milne of Typelab. Two type families, Text and Display, were drawn from two defining sources of reference: the hand-lettered street signs of Villers-Bretonneux, where the post-war town renamed its streets and laneways after Australian cities in tribute to the soldiers who liberated them, and the remarkable collection of maps from Sir John Monash's own archive, featuring the precise handwritten annotations, diagrams and notations with which one of history's great military strategists planned and directed the Australian Corps across the Western Front. 

The brief called for letterforms both classical and slightly irreverent in personality, reflecting the young Australian diggers remembered by French locals as much for their larrikin spirit as their courage in battle. The result is a typeface that carries the weight of history without solemnity, rooted in the specific visual culture of this place and time. 

The lasting legacy of the project is the typeface itself. The Department of Veterans' Affairs has since adopted Monash as its standard typeface across memorial sites around the world, ensuring that letterforms born from the fields of the Somme continue to carry Australia's story of remembrance wherever it is told.