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Fol­low­ing on from Con­tem­por­ary Type Foundries Part 1, presen­ted below are the final six type foundries I’ve chosen to dis­play. So, without fur­ther ado…

Author: Brad­ley Hot­son for The Graphic Design School
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The Foundries

Exljbris

The dis­tinct­ively col­oured Exljbris homepage and a sample from their Didone-like typeface Questa. Imagery used with kind per­mis­sion of © Exljbris.

Strik­ing art­work by graphic designer Kris­tian Bjorn­ard who has exper­i­mented with and mod­i­fied Exljbris’s font Geot­ica Three.

Described on its blog as a ‘one-man Dutch font foundry’ Exljbris was foun­ded by Jos Buivenga. Exljbris is where Jos releases and offers his typefaces. For 15 years, his online friends and fans could fol­low the devel­op­ment of his typefaces and down­load the res­ults at no cost. In 2008, while still work­ing as an art dir­ector at an advert­ising agency, he released his first com­mer­cial typeface Museo with sev­eral weights offered for free. That strategy paid off and Museo became a huge best­seller. Partly thanks to that suc­cess he now calls him­self a full time type designer. Recent pro­jects include a cus­tom ver­sion of Museo & Museo Sans for Dell and the Questa pro­ject, a col­lab­or­a­tion with the well-known type designer Mar­tin Majoor.

Lino­type

(Top) The Lino­type homepage is a portal to typo­graphic manna; (below) a tan­tal­ising col­lec­tion of Lino­type spe­ci­mens. All imagery used with kind per­mis­sion of © Lino­type.

Lino­type should need no intro­duc­tion, being at the centre of typo­graph­ical innov­a­tion (and upheaval) for the past 120 years (in one guise or another). This from their web­site: “The day Ottmar Mer­genthaler demon­strated the first linecast­ing machine to the New York Tribune in 1886, Whitelaw Reid, the editor, was delighted: “Ottmar,” he said, “you’ve cast a line of type!” The editor’s words formed the basis for the com­pany label, and marked the begin­ning of Linotype’s suc­cess story. Four years later, the ingeni­ous inventor foun­ded the Mer­genthaler Lino­type Com­pany. Little did he know that after more than 100 years of suc­cess­ful busi­ness the Lino­type, a wholly-owned sub­si­di­ary of Mono­type Ima­ging Hold­ings Inc., would be fol­low­ing in his footsteps.”

Today, Lino­type sees itself as a part­ner to typo­graph­ers and design­ers and has one of the world’s largest font lib­rar­ies (10,500 typefaces and count­ing). Its com­pre­hens­ive web­site is a mas­terly feat of nav­ig­a­tion; vis­it­ors able to search for fonts not only through tech­nical spe­cific­a­tions but also by inten­ded use (text, cor­por­ate, screen etc.), type foundry and char­ac­ter set fea­tures. In addi­tion the Lino­type Form Finder makes it pos­sible for users to reshape a font sample dis­played in order to select the kind of typeface he is look­ing for. There are so many other use­ful ser­vices and products on the Lino­type site that it’s prob­ably bet­ter you just have a per­use rather than read me prat­tling on.

HypeFor­Type

(Top & middle) HypeForType’s homepage com­plete with arrest­ing 3D type art­work and type spe­ci­mens of Killer, Neo Deco and Links, which form dis­tinct­ive pieces of design in their own right. HypeFor­Type turned 1 recently and pos­ted this announce­ment on their blog. Imagery used with kind per­mis­sion of © HypeFor­Type.

“A labour of love for founder Alex Haigh” is how HypeFor­Type is described on its web­site. The foundry is 1 year old now and already has an impress­ive col­lec­tion of high qual­ity, new and exclus­ive faces as well as some eso­teric and unusual ones. Their blog is a good read, you’ll find com­pet­i­tions, inter­views and excit­ing announce­ments there. Per­haps most strik­ing of all is HypeForType’s pre­dilec­tion for work­ing with some of the design industry’s big names, col­lab­or­a­tions which pro­duce unique one-offs avail­able exclus­ively through HypeForType.

Lucas­Fonts

LucasFonts’s web­site embod­ies much of what might be termed Inter­na­tional or Swiss style design. Beneath are two examples from Ger­many of their fonts in use. Imagery used with kind per­mis­sion of © Lucas­Fonts.

Lucas De Groot foun­ded his own type foundry, Lucas­Fonts, in 2000. Its aim, in a few words: “to make the world a bet­ter place by design­ing typefaces that look good and work well under any cir­cum­stances and in many lan­guages.” The web­site claims “Graphic design­ers across the planet have dis­covered the spe­cial qual­it­ies of Luc(as)’ fonts. They are attrac­ted by their func­tion­al­ity and friendly appear­ance and love the enorm­ous range of pos­sib­il­it­ies that each fam­ily offers. Many also appre­ci­ate the idio­syn­crasies – a quest for extremes that has res­ul­ted in some of the nar­row­est, thin­nest, wit­ti­est or bold­est typefaces around.”

Lucas­Fonts has a sis­ter com­pany, Font­Fab­rik which spe­cial­ises in cus­tom typefaces and is now world-renowned, hav­ing designed fonts for Microsoft, Heineken, Siemens and Volkswagen.

SMelt­ery

Shown above are SMeltery’s idio­syn­cratic homepage, type spe­ci­mens of Heretica, Geronto Bis (which Jack is par­tic­u­larly proud of) and Enfer, and enga­gingly designed samples of Sans Merci and Soupirs. Imagery used with kind per­mis­sion of © SMelt­ery.

SMelt­ery is a French type foundry foun­ded by Jack Usine in 2002, which offers a very attract­ive range of display-type faces. There are some gems to be found in the ‘free’ sec­tion, though Jack’s cur­rently most proud of recent works like Vid­ange, Mega­lo­polis and Geronto Bis. A Bordeaux-based graphic designer, Jack also main­tains a vigour­ous involve­ment in vari­ous aspects of visual cul­ture, which seems to have influ­enced his ener­getic SMelt­ery typefaces in an intriguing way.

Typon­ine

Typonine’s homepage devotes a lot of space to new faces such as the eleg­ant, high-contrast Mar­lene. Shown bot­tom is a spec­tac­u­lar selec­tion of typo­graphic posters from Tipo­plakat of which Nikola Djurek is a mem­ber. Imagery used with kind per­mis­sion of © Typon­ine.

Typon­ine is a digital type foundry and graphic design stu­dio based in Croa­tia and The Neth­er­lands. It is run by graphic and type designer Nikola Djurek who foun­ded Typon­ine in 2005. Their fonts have a pre­ci­sion, ten­sion and eleg­ance about them which would make them a good choice for dis­cern­ing cli­ents. The Play­ground page of their web­site is a mis­chiev­ous patch ded­ic­ated to type exper­i­ments and pro­jects, and through Tipo­plakat, cus­tom­ers can order from a col­lec­tion of stun­ning typo­graphic posters designed by Djurek and his close associates.

Sum­mary

Unob­trus­ive in their way, type foundries have made the trans­ition from Old Trade to the digital age with élan and are a vital pil­lar of the mod­ern design pro­fes­sion, indis­pens­able to stu­dios and those cli­ents will­ing to com­mis­sion bespoke fonts. But they should also become indis­pens­able to stu­dents and fledglings, for even if unable to afford some of the fonts, it pays to be aware of things at the top end of the pro­fes­sion, and the ser­vices, guid­ance and free down­loads make foundries an invalu­able resource. You might be so con­vinced of a font’s appro­pri­ate­ness for a par­tic­u­lar job that it’s pos­sible to argue a cli­ent into part­ing with the funds for it. So cap­tiv­ated by the lig­at­ures of a typeface that the 70 pounds/dollars/euros you had set aside for a big night out you instead divert for its pur­chase. Unreal­istic? Maybe, but you live in hope!