Mecano was originally distributed by the Nebiolo type foundry in Turin, Italy. It is a set of geometric pieces which can be combined by the compositor as he chooses.

The basis for this digital version was a specimen showing the construction of narrow upper case and figures. Diacritics and punctuation are a personal development of the original typeface, obtained from the same basic components. The same applies to the Serif version, which was also created from the Mecano pieces, but were not on the original model.