ABCdarium

by Veronika Burian

José and I met at the University of Reading whilst completing our MAs in Type Design. José was one year after me, but came to Reading already in the summer while we were finishing our projects. We got to know each other a bit and talked about having our own foundry at some point, but without finalising any serious plans. So we stayed in touch while José was completing his MA, and at the beginning of 2006 an opportunity came up to work together on our first type project, Karmina.

The idea for Karmina developed from José‹s dissertation about problems related to printing in different media. The motivation to actually bring this typeface to completion was the TiposLatinos competition, organised annually by a group of Argentinean designers.

We continued to work on Karmina and decided to collaborate and develop an independent type foundry under the label TypeTogether. The first year, we had both fulltime jobs, so TT was a side-project. Nevertheless we invested our spare time in developing some font ideas, a website and distribution network. TT grew continuously into a serious undertaking and now keeps company to other well-known fontlabels. From the start, our interest was finding innovative and stylish solutions to old problems for the professional market of text typefaces, with a focus on editorial use. We believe this area to be the most rewarding and fascinating to us. This is where the greatest challenges are faced: creating typefaces that perform well in continuous reading, that also have a high degree of personality. In addition to our library of retail fonts, TT also provides custom modifications and specially tailored typefaces; these can serve as vital elements of a company’s visual identity, by communicating a unique feel.

One of the most common questions, we are asked, is how we work with each other. I would say that trust, appreciation and compatible skills and interests are the fundaments of our business relationship. Of course, skype and email are indispensable too. As far as our working process is concerned; we discuss what kind of new typeface we would like to develop, what direction to take, how many weights to do, what proportions we want, etc. We then both start to sketch some ideas, give each other feedback, send the files back and forth and decide together how to solve problems when they occur. When it comes to production and expanding the character-set we divide the work depending on our individual workload. Sometimes we also get extra help when it gets too busy.

Apart from our own fonts, we have also signed up some great typefaces from other designers. The aim was to provide common grounds for intense co-operation with them and thus create a diverse platform stimulating exchange of ideas and knowledge. At the beginning, we asked a few of our class-mates from Reading, if they would like to publish with us and all of them agreed. Partially, we helped them to finish their design and prepared the font files for publication, i.e. control the technical aspects, such as testing, OT programming, etc. With time and increasing popularity, we received many font submissions by other designers interested in publishing their work with us. On some occasion, we addressed particular designers directly, because we liked their work. Our criteria for new outside designs are mainly, quality of the design, technically and aesthetically, and also if the typeface would fit into our font library.

The quality of our work has been already recognized in several international competitions, including TDC and EDAwards.

Typefaces by Type Together

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