IDEA 392. Type Design Now Experimental Type Designers and Type Foundries

Direction by Kazuhiro Yamada (nipponia) × Idea
Design by Kazuhiro Yamada (nipponia) , Radim Peško, LABORATORIES (Kensaku Kato, Hiroyuki Kishida)
Cooperation: Min-Young Kim, Akira1975, Eric Q Liú

Just as graphic design has become a creative field that anyone with a few tools can practice, type design – previously the specialized profession of a limited few – has since the 2000s been open to ever more people with the widespread availability of creative tools in a digital environment. The establishment of various platforms and communities for publishing and vending font data has served to familiarize the broader public with typefaces and type design. Another major factor is the growth of media that focuses on type design, as a part of the social infrastructure that supports text-based culture, and introduces creators engaged in it.

This feature article introduces 10 designers or type foundries. They are based in various parts of the world – Europe, the Middle East, Asia – but all are working outside the mainstream of type production by major vendors, and they include freelance type designers, individuals who have established their own type foundries, and those designing type as part of an independent design practice. In the first half of the feature, we focus on designers and foundries outside Latin alphabet-using regions, and seek to re-examine from the ground level the current status of type design and its popularization and use in various countries. In the second half we look back over the work of type designer Radim Peško, whose foundry celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2020, and discuss the work of type designers engaged in diverse collaborative and experimental activities outside the framework of conventional type design.