Comments on: Five foundries that make us go “mmmm…”

By: Abi Huynh

Abi Huynh — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:33:22 +0000

Being a former student of Keith Tam's here in Vancouver (ECI!) I am a big fan of Village, I just recently bought Apex New for my portfolio and a few projects and it's been quite a joy to use. So much amazing talent is part of Village, I've been admiring Omnes, the Galaxie family and Feijoa.

Oh and one more thing, Keith is in Hong Kong now as a lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and working on his own projects (a serif!)...so you might not get to meet him for a while.

By: Daniel Schutzsmith

Daniel Schutzsmith — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 09:16:54 +0000

Great post! Its funny because I was just discussing my favorite type foundries with a student last week. Needless to say, Hoefler-Jones was at the top of my list. Although, I must now admit that I extremely admire Underware. I had not heard of them before so this is a terrific find for me! Thanks so much!

By: Randy J. Hunt

Randy J. Hunt — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 22:53:51 +0000

Thanks for the good humored reply Jonathan. I don't know where I heard that specific bit, but clearly I needn't trust them.

Running a type foundry does sound pretty fun though.

By: Leanda Ryan

Leanda Ryan — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:42:49 +0000

Great post. I frequently use typefaces from a small but prolific foundry called k-type.

http://www.k-type.com

By: Jonathan Hoefler

Jonathan Hoefler — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:53:17 +0000

Thanks for including us, and for the kind words about Whitney!

Randy, I'm not sure what the scuttlebutt is, but for what it's worth: we don't collect license fees from Apple for every Mac sold, or for anything else, for that matter. Apple licensed Hoefler Text from us in 1992, and that was pretty much that. Rest assured that if I'd made a mint from the deal, I'd have spent the past 14 years doing something much more fun than running a type foundry!

By: Randy J. Hunt

Randy J. Hunt — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:36:49 +0000

As an aside, I have heard on several occasions that Hoefler & Frere-Jones have earnings that would definitely qualify them as "wealthy" under some rubrics. Imagine the liscense fee you'd recieve if a font that carried your last name (Hoefler Text) was installed on every Mac sold.

Regardless, every font should be purchased.
All legal, all the way.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:12:59 +0000

Nice post. I share your passion for typography -- they call me Font Boy around the office, and type catalogs are some of my favorite bedtime reading.

The foundries/distributors you list are, indeed, doing great work. It's one of the great things about being a designer these days -- an embarassment of type riches!

Here are some other small enterprises producing great type:

Process Typefoundry
http://www.processtypefoundry.com

Mark Simonson
http://www.ms-studio.com

Storm Type
http://www.stormtype.com/

Porchez Typofonderie
http://www.typofonderie.com/

OurType
http://www.ourtype.be/

By: makethelogobigger

makethelogobigger — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:28:05 +0000

As an aside, there was this funky little type place around the corner from my old agency which is called fonthaus: http://www.fonthaus.com/

While it’s great that there are so many fonts available these days, restraint in using every last one of them in a given design is still the most important thing.

By: John Cassimatis

John Cassimatis — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:23:15 +0000

Great entry and there's nothing wrong with being so passionate about something. Typography can make or break a project.