# Riks..

> The ‹Riks› stencils, completing Sindre Bremnes’ [Telefon family](https://monokrom.no/fonts/telefon), is in part based on the seven letters adorning the sides of the telephone kiosk by the same name, designed by architect Georg Fredrik Fasting in 1932. In Bremnes’ all-purpose Telefon typeface the original stencil ‹O› is relegated to a stylistic set—in ‹Riks› its stencil logic is applied to the entire character set.
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> Fasting submitted his drawings for the competition to design a new public phonebooth announced by Oslo Telefonanlegg in 1932. His winning design, ‹[Riks](https://telenorkulturarv.no/en/designing-an-icon)›, would since become an icon of Scandinavian Functionalist architecture, following only two years after Svenska Slöjdföreningen’s influential [1930 Stockholm exhibition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Exhibition_\(1930\)).
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> There is a certain irony to Georg Fredrik Fasting’s story. While his fellow countrymen embraced ‹Riks›, he himself could not use his own creation—he was born without ears. Coming from a family of workers and smallholders in Bergen, Georg entered this world a shy and secluded character. This changed in 1959, when the 56 year old Fasting’s diary contains a remarkable entry: «I CAN HEAR!» The designer of a beloved telephone kiosk was the world’s first person to have ear canals surgically constructed and eardrums fitted.
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> The ‹Riks› stencil fonts are available in two styles: Normal and Negativ. The latter offers master drawings for producing typographical stencil letters capable of reproducing any text. Why is ‹Riks› free? There are two reasons: Firstly, we want more people to notice our work, and ‹Riks›, being a relatively simple production (or so we thought) derived from an older design, seemed fitting for such a giveaway. Secondly, we consider these letterforms a piece of Norwegian cultural heritage and thus only fair to offer free-of-charge to the general public.

— [Riks](https://monokrom.no/fonts/riks) is designed by [Sindre Bremnes](https://monokrom.no/page/about_us/characters) and [Frode Helland](https://frodehelland.com) of [Monokrom](https://monokrom.no).