TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:45:11 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Underware

Underware is a (typo)graphic design-studio which is specialized in designing and producing typefaces. These are published for retail sale or are specially tailor-made. The company was founded in 1999 by Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs and Sami Kortemäki. Since 2002 Hugo Cavalheiro d'Alte is also part of the studio. They are based in Den Haag, Helsinki and Amsterdam. In 2017, they joined Type Network.

Bas Jacobs and Akiem Helmling designed Dolly (2001), a 4-font book typeface with flourishes, brushy, sturdy, Dutch. They created Sofa, a precursor of Sauna (2002; +Sauna Mono Pro), which won an award at the TDC2 2003 competition. In 2002, they made Stool for a Finnish printing house, Salpausselän Kirjapaino Ltd. Ulrika is a custom display typeface designed for Proidea Oy (a Finnish film and video production company).

Unibody 8 and 10 (2003) is a free OpenType pixel font optimized for FlashMX.

In 2004, they created Auto, about which they write: Auto is a sans serif typeface which has three different models of italics, each with its own flavour. The font family consists of 3 x 24 fonts. With its three italics, Auto creates a new typographic palette, allowing the user to drive through unknown typographic and linguistic possibilities. Auto is fully loaded with both full Western and Eastern European character sets. Auto won an award at the TDC2 2005 type competition.

Additional material on the web page: a wonderful intro to type basics, and an intro to OpenType.

In 2004, they published the comic book / signage family Bello, which won an award at the TDC2 2005 type competition.

In 2005, Underware joined the type coop Village.

In 2006, they published Fakir, a blackletter family with Hindi inspirations. Fakir won an award at TDC2 2007.

Interview in 2008.

In 2009, they published the connected script brush typeface Liza (+Text, Display, Caps, Ornaments), which has several versions for each letter.

In 2015, Bas Jacobs, Akiem Helmling and Sami Kortemäki published the stencil family Tripper Pro.

Zeitung Pro (2016) is a substantial sans family, designed for micro and macro use, with optical sizes, and a Zeitung Flex variable Opentype font to boot.

Custom types: Stockmann Sans (2012, with Kokoro & Moi: for the Scandinavian department store), Kone (2012: for the elevator company), Mr. Porter (script with a dozen alternatives for each glyph to better simulate real handwriting; it was awarded at TDC 2012 and at Tokyo TDC 2012), Stool (Headline, Thin, Grand), Sauna Mono (for the Danish Jyske Bank), Fated (fat), Ulrika (rounded and informal, slightly plump: for Proidea Ltd, a Finnish video production company), Suunto (2012; for sports watches, i.e., Suunto's Cobra2, Vyper2 and Elementum).

Underware received a prize in the TDC Tokyo Type Directorts Club 2020 awards for Grammato, a contribution in the area of animated and automated typography. Their typeface Y (2020) is an OpenType Variable Display typeface, based on higher order interpolation. It won an award at 23TDC.

In 2021, Underware released Plakato Pro, a stencil family that expanded into the neon, outline, inline, video game, grunge, kitchen tile and prismatic versions.

MyFonts interview. Type Network link.

View Underware's typeface library. Speaker(s) at ATypI 2019 in Tokyo, where they introduce the notion of grammatography: writing with letters that are not prefabricated, but that react to the user and reader---grammatos.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Underware
 [Buy fonts]
Monotype link
Monotype foundry link
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Pixel/bitmap fonts ⦿ Typography ⦿ OpenType software ⦿ The Finnish type scene ⦿ Dutch type design ⦿ Comic/cartoon fonts ⦿ Blackletter fonts ⦿ Brush script typefaces ⦿ Signage typefaces ⦿ Handwriting fonts ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Experimental type ⦿ Prismatic typefaces ⦿ Kitchen tile fonts ⦿ Pixel/bitmap fonts ⦿