TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Wed Nov 20 11:41:04 EST 2024

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ABOUT

The Foundry Types

London-based foundry set up by David Quay and Freda Sack in 1989, and after Freda's death, continued by David Quay and Stuart de Rozario. Their typefaces were first made using the Architype label:

• Architype Albers (1997).
• Architype Aubette. Based on Theo van Doesburg's 1928 signage lettering for the Café Aubette in Strasbourg.
• Architype Ballmer. A De Stijl typeface inspired by the experimental, universal letterforms drawn by Bauhaus trained Swiss designer Theo Ballmer for a series of 1928 posters, most notably for an exhibition on industrial standards.
• Architype Bayer. Drawn from Bauhaus Archiv sketches for a minimal sans typeface that was created in 1925 by Herbert Bayer.
• Architype Bayer-Type. Based upon Herbert Bayer's 1931 universal, modern serifed alphabet. Although the modern style appears to be a radical departure from his first sans single alphabet of 1925, the structure of this later serifed style is still grid based and geometrically constructed.
• Architype Bill. The Foundry writes: Architype Bill was developed from the few letterforms created by Max Bill for a 1949 exhibition poster. All the forms, with the exception of the letter o, were constructed using only straight lines and triangles on a purely mathematical basis, that showed the continued influence of his earlier Bauhaus training, and the universal alphabet principle.
• Architype Catalogue Outline, Architype Catalogue Solid (2016). Architype Catalogue originates from Wim Crouwel's Stedelijk Museum exhibition catalogue for sculptor Claes Oldenburg, 1970. The cover's soft padded letterforms evoke the artist's work. Oldenburg was so taken with the design, that he asked Wim Crouwel to complete the alphabet.
• Architype Fodor. Based on Wim Crouwel's work, the Fodor letterforms were created for the magazine published by Museum Fodor, Amsterdam. To save cost it was designed to be typeset on their own electric typewriter.
• Architype Ingenieur. Architype Ingenieur was inspired by Wim Crouwel's late 1950s exhibition catalogues and posters, for which he had created a few geometrically constructed, simplified letterforms. In the 1960 Venice Biennale Dutch entry poster, he drew grid-based letters with 45-degree angles for olanda, the style influenced by his boyhood fascination with naval lettering. A subtle variation appeared in the Stedelijk Museum catalogue for painter Jean Brusselmans. Several dot matrix versions followed. The themes and systems in these early letterforms are encapsulated in this new (2016) four-weight family Architype Ingenieur.
• New Alphabet 1 through 3. Based on Crouwel's New Alphabet and developed in consultation with him)---a free version of this is New Alphabet (2008, Matt McInerney).
• Architype Renner. Related to the early experimental versions of Paul Renner's Futura.
• Architype Stedelijk (1997). LED-like, based on Crouwel's ideas. The Foundry writes: Stedelijk first appeared in the seminal Vormgevers poster, commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1968. Crouwel created a rigid grid system across the poster of 57 vertical by 41 horizontal lines, also forming the basis for the construction of the letterforms. Although all hand drawn, the resulting typeface had a machine-made appearance. This striking black and white poster with its visible grid became one of Crouwel's most iconic designs. Architype Stedelijk now re-creates these letterforms as a single alphabet typeface in a digital font.
• Architype Schwitters. Developed from the phonetic experiments made by Kurt Schwitters with his 1927 universal alphabet.
• Architype Tschichold. A very thin avant-garde sans: Architype Tschichold is a faithful rendering of Jan Tschichold's 1929 experimental alphabet which was influenced by Bayer's single-alphabet. His design was never put into production. This re-creates his original geometrically constructed design, including some phonetic characters.
• Architype Van der Leck (1993-1994). Based on a 1941 De Stijl alphabet designed by Bart van der Leck for the avant-garde magazine Flax.
• Architype Van Doesburg (1996). Based on a 1919 alphabet by Van Doesburg obtained by dividing a square into 25 equal smaller squares.
• Architype Vierkant. This typeface was developed from the few letterforms that Crouwel created for an opening spread in a 1972 Drupa catalogue, on the theme "typo vision international".

Their other fonts have the label Foundry and include Foundry Sans (1990, a humanist sans inspired by Stempel Garamond), Foundry Old Style (1990-1994, inspired by Nicholas Jenson's types), Foundry Wilson (a Baskerville that revives a 1760 font from Scottish type founder Alexander Wilson), Foundry Journal, Foundry Gridnik, Foundry Form Sans, Foundry Form Serif, Foundry Monoline (2000), Foundry Origin, Foundry Sterling (2002, sans serif, in the style of Bliss and Gill Sans), Foundry Context (a sans family), Foundry Dat, Foundry Dit, Foundry Fabriek (an industrial orthogonal almost military stencil developed in consultation with Wim Crouwel), Foundry Flek (a dot matrix font), Foundry Plek, Foundry New Johnston, and Foundry Wilson Expert.

Michael Barbosa started work on Metroplis (1995) for Metroplisboa, the Lisbon subway, while he was working at Wolff Olins. That custom font project was finished by David Quay and Freda Sack.

EXTERNAL LINKS
The Foundry Types
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INTERNAL LINKS
Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Very thin (hairline sans) typefaces ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Avant Garde typefaces ⦿ De Stijl and type design ⦿ LED / LCD fonts ⦿ Pixel/bitmap fonts ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Octagonal typefaces ⦿ Military typefaces ⦿ Experimental type ⦿ Bauhaus and type design ⦿ Unicase type design ⦿