Doublethink was developed from the lettering drawn in the 1960s by Vinko Ožić-Pajić for the shop fronts of Yugoslavian state-owned clothes company Standard Konfekcija. The original design has been reinterpreted and expanded via the construction of a two weight typeface—Doublethink Medium and Doublethink Bold Inline.
Standard Konfekcija began life as a military fabric company and later became the first fashion brand in Communist Yugoslavia. It is famous for being the first shop in the country to offer plastic bags. The shops now no longer exist, having all been closed down after the fall of Communism.
The name Doublethink is taken from George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It means ‘the power of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously in one’s mind and accepting both of them’—an appropriate name for letterforms originating from a Communist regime and an increasingly relevant concept in the present era of surveillance.
