Nimbostratus is a typeface I designed to evoke the experience of the clouds suddenly parting after a heavy rain. I wanted to make something that reflects a particular state of nature that I have never heard described in enough detail. The sky is black, the clouds are thick like soot smoke. Then suddenly, as if by divine intervention, the rain stops. The blue sky begins to peek out from behind the clouds, and the black rain clouds make their way for the sky. In this moment, between rain and a clear day, something special happens. We forget our daily squabbles, our obsessions with trivial matters, our modern lives. Maybe some of us caught in this rare occurence will, once again, be one with the experience of nature. A human in this moment is the perceiver of nature, but not separate from its phenomena. And so, I wanted to design a typeface that suggests this moment. While I was designing the face itself I realized that I didn’t want to design a typeface first and the rain clouds parting second. I didn’t want to make a typeface “that suggests rain,” but instead I wanted to design “rain that suggests a typeface”. So this is the explanation as to why this is not a usual, simple, or even totally legible typeface. Certainly taken out of context some characters will hardly be recognizable as part of the alphabet at all. But used in the appropriate context, I hope that it can convey this important unnamed experience in nature.