At first glance, Materia shows a contemporary flair, combining pure, strong geometrical form with a subtle, distinct appearance. Actually, the postneutral design was inspired by lettering from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that still can be found in the East of France. While its formal origins date back as far as this, revived e. g. by the constructivists into the nineteen twenties and later on by Dutch information designer Wim Crouwel in the nineteen-sixties, the visual language of Materia still speaks of »future«.

Following a minimalistic concept the font is formally built on a grid. Wherever optical curves are needed for a smoother, more comfortable shape of letters than a simple rectangular block, diagonals cut off the edges—like a diamond is cut to achieve more beauty. Thus headlines and texts set in Materia are given a certain »edgy« feeling, whereas their tonality is still kept well-balanced, keeping concentration all on information in a nonconformist way.

Materia comes in eight styles, from elegant Thin to attention-forcing Ultra. Even a regular Italic is available, following the classic type-setprinciple. Two of the styles are explicitly designed for display use, Shadow and Code. Both are ready for combinations with Bold or each other respectively, the layering of Shadow and Code e. g. allows astonishing effects of highlighting within the letters.

For OpenType-users Materia is a real Pro, containing accented Latin letters for over 70 languages, small caps, old style, tabular and lining figures and special condensed titling all caps for cases in which space is all that counts. How useful all of the above mentioned is may be seen in the book David Lynch—Lithos, designed by KOMA AMOK, published in 2010 by item éditions, Paris, and Hatje Cantz, Germany, which was typeset completely in Materia.

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