Both Bitstream Oz Handicraft (another product of the Ryan studio) and ITC Migrate are based on designs of the popular early twentieth century type designer, Oswald Cooper. The inspiration for both typefaces comes from drawing samples found in the Book of Oz Cooper, published in 1949 by The Society of Typographic Arts in Chicago.

‘Oz,’ as he was affectionately known to his contemporaries, worked extensively with the sans serif form long before it became popular in the States, eschewing a popular belief of the time that ‘sans serifs are only skeletons for letters’

ITC Migrate represents a more highly evolved version of the Bitstream design, the latter being more informal and quirkier, as suggested by the pinched tops of some of its vertical strokes. The uppercase characters and figures, in particular, have been re-worked, resulting in a more formal and traditional, compressed sans serif typeface.