On TypeTogether’s tenth anniversary we wanted to introduce you to the growing team, talk about what we’ve accomplished with our partners, and give a hint about what’s ahead. For those who don’t know the team personally, this is a little peek behind the curtain.
TypeTogether began in 2006 with remote collaborative work between Veronika Burian, then based in the USA, and José Scaglione in Argentina. This wasn’t common a decade ago; it required some courage and a strong work ethic to prove it could be done. More than that, it required foresight, a bit of boldness, and some business savvy to turn it into a success.
TypeTogether has grown into a diverse group of international designers — a core team that’s spread around the world and invested in the daily work, connected to a flexible network of professionals who intermittently work on specific projects.
José and Veronika run the foundry from Argentina and Spain, respectively, dividing their time between designing type, furthering the business side, and mentoring the rest of the team with encouragement and involvement at every level. Greek senior type designer Irene Vlachou is joined by German senior type engineer Sonja Stange and newcomer to the team, Lebanese type engineer and type designer Azza Alameddine. Elena Veguillas manages the communications department from London, working closely with American copywriter and editor Joshua Farmer, and for a few months, with graphic and type designer Noel Pretorious. Fernanda Farias handles all administrative duties from Argentina and China PR is run by Liu Zhao .
We are each committed to helping others by taking an active, educational role in the type and design community: in workshops and conferences, as a teacher or mentor, and through ongoing research and published materials like our brochure ‘Typography: Made to Fit’. We love putting good into the world and we’re convinced that education and encouragement is the best way to do that.
Our ideals and values drive us. And we’ve put those values to good use, partnering with well known companies to create tailored fonts for the client’s specific needs — branding, newspapers, and devices — whether digital or in print. As an independent type foundry, we get to make our own decisions and curate our own catalogue. We aren’t beholden to the market, but are able to take on projects that further our values, such as offering multi-script typefaces in Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic, with three additional languages in the immediate pipeline. Something we are also proud of is maintaining strong relationships with our designers and customers. We try to create a bridge between those using our typefaces and those making them. Both are important and we happily invest in both.
One way we invest is through a scholarship we created called the Typeface Publishing Incentive Programme. Each year we choose one promising type design graduate to mentor and support as they publish their first type family through TypeTogether. Past winners are Roxane Gataud (Bely), Quentin Schmerber (Temeraire), and Juan Bruce (Noort). We also seek out current type designers we think would help expand and diversify our catalogue, from the newcomers we’ve mentioned to renowned and experienced designers, such as Dr Gerard Unger and Xavier Dupré. Regardless where a designer is on their career path, our catalogue is defined by its high calibre, its usefulness, and its ability to grab attention.
Top: workshop during BITS6 in Bangkok 2016 (photo cortesy of BITS6), bottom left: workshop in Valencia–CIT5 2014, bottom right: type crit at the Department of Typography, University of Reading, with the MATD students (photo by Pedro Arilla).
Our focus on excellence has serendipitously paved the way for inclusion in exhibitions, annuals, books, and best-of lists from the beginning. Our quality of work has even garnered awards for the designers in the most stringent global competitions: Granshan, TDC, ED Awards, and ISTD to name a few. And while we are extremely thankful for this public recognition, we realise it is but a secondary outcome of the values we hold dear — solving problems with great type; investing in others as we are able; diligently expanding our language reach; maintaining great relationships; treating our clients with the utmost respect; trying to do good for its own sake; and educating and encouraging those within our sphere of influence.
These things excite us and drive us. Type design and font use are seeing a renaissance of sorts, with new technologies and markets unfolding as we speak. We are excited about what the future might bring and it’s all because of you, our extended family. So we want to acknowledge the most important thing at this ten year anniversary — you. We chose the name TypeTogether because we wanted to form a partnership with you. We appreciate your trust and your enthusiasm. We’re in this together and we’re in it for the long haul. Thank you for walking alongside us in this journey so far!
TypeTogether is an indie type foundry committed to excellence in type design with a focus on editorial use. Additionally, TypeTogether creates custom type design for corporate use. We invite you to browse our library of retail fonts or contact us to discuss custom type design projects.