The Cholla™ typeface family was designed in 1998-99 and named after a species of cactus indigenous to the Mojave Desert. Cholla was originally developed for Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Denise Gonzales Crisp, then art director of the college’s design office, collaborated with Sibylle Hagmann to design a family of typefaces that would include a vast variation of font weights. This diversity of weights was applied to echo the institution’s different areas of study, yet the fonts were to exhibit a unified feel. Formally the individual styles have slightly varying personalities with subtly distinct ideas applied. The Cholla family was first used in the radically designed 1999/2000 Art Center catalog, which won a honorable mention in I.D. magazine and was featured in EYE, 31. Cholla’s original weight range included 12 different styles. Today a modern classic, the type family is offered in OpenType format with an extended range of 19 weights, bundled into Sans, Slab, Wide and Unicase subgroups.