As the seasons change and we take time to enjoy the holidays, we also take a minute as a company to reflect on this past year’s projects. It’s no use to just toss a dozen or two families into the digital ether — we want to be purposeful about what we bring to the world, adding value instead of more noise. So join us as we look back at what we’ve been able to accomplish in 2024 with you and our other partners.
Type design is equal parts science and art — aesthetically appealing and functionally adept. This past year gave us many opportunities across several categories: impressive typeface releases, education support, insightful editorials, unique custom fonts for corporate clients, and working on two upcoming books: one about Primarium and another about Gerard Unger and the annual TypeTogether scholarship named after him. Ready for this year’s wrap-up? It’s chock full of great work! And along the way we’ll give a few hints about what’s to come.
In July we released an upgrade of Tablet Gothic. We almost doubled the character set to now include well over 200 languages, retooled a few shapes to bring greater refinement and future-proofing to the entire family, and made a variable font version for almost infinite styles in a much smaller file size. If you haven’t already done so, grab your free upgrade from our website now!
A few months ago we released Chaco by renowned Argentinian designer and educator Rubén Fontana. Chaco is an outrageously contemporary offering from classic roots with seven weights plus matching italics — packed in static fonts or as a variable font — that increase its ability to compose headlines and texts for mass media, particularly newspapers and periodicals. It is also a pitch-perfect typeface for identity and branding work, wayfinding, and composing immersive reading texts.
Postea expanded this year with four new scripts for the generously styled and impactful geometric font family. The entire five-script Postea family holds to meaningful minimalism in which each element is deliberately placed, has functional and aesthetic utility, and is able to fulfil more than one purpose. From branding and posters to headlines and text, Postea Multiscript can be as bright as a neon colour palette or as subdued as a whisper. In text it is the partner to more audacious typefaces, and in larger sizes it sets the tonal expectation for the rest of the design. Snag it in Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Hebrew.
The geometric release was followed by a modern and trustworthy slab serif — Emma Marichal’s Ploquine As the winner of the 2022 Gerard Unger Scholarship, Ploquine is an editorial typeface of structured delicacy and wide applicability. Its lighter weights carry a ton of air within their forms to lean into the emotions of delicacy and subtlety. Its heavier weights claim territory on a page and state its message with confidence. And each style in between shows varying levels of squared counterforms and unique details. Use it for a logo or masthead, find delight in how this slab can be perfect for magazine text, and revel in its details in large-format posters. Ploquine’s range is immense and we can’t wait for you to enjoy it!
Playwrite
We have continued to move forward with research and new projects based on the results from our Primarium.info website. You’ve already seen our casual, tech-savvy, and free Playpen Sans, and have likely seen that we are expanding it with more scripts coming in 2025, but we wanted to take it one step further.
We created Playwrite, a wonderfully comprehensive family, based on the Primarium results for each of the 40 Latin-based countries. Simply choose your desired country, download the fonts, and use the font for your lessons. It is a free, versatile typeface for teaching handwriting, localised for your region — amazingly elementary.
Each year we are graciously commissioned to create custom typefaces for great companies, and this year was no different. We designed Karmina UBS, Bely Monroo, and logo design for Esthevas. We continued our strong relationship with the overall Ötztal brand and provided another custom design, Ötztal Widi, to their repertoire. The new Etica Garda Trentino is a custom version of LFT Etica with a few curvy, eye-catching characters. And Adelle Sans Gurgl Headline is a modified version of Adelle Sans Condensed with slants in the typography, inspired by the diagonals of the diamond element and reflecting Gurgl’s special attraction in the Alps.
For years our free, invitation-only microsite, TypeTogether Premier, has focused on serving agencies and other creative organisations. We are currently woking on updating our main website, including Premier, with greater functionality to serve you better: the possibility to easily download test fonts with reduced character sets, and continuing relationships with branding agencies, publishers, and graphic design studios.
What’s included in your free Premier membership? You can download all our retail fonts for testing purposes, get access to beta fonts during their creation, and free typographic services. If you think you or your company may benefit from this service, email us at [email protected] and we’ll get right back to you.
As always, we continued to publish articles, interviews, and other pieces of interest on our blog. Here are some highlights from 2024.
Interviews & articles
We are as committed as always to creating things that help, that educate, and that give a peek into who we are. Check out the video interviews with Laura Meseguer and Emma Marichal, the summary of our annual meeting, an article about fonts for gaming, and Azza’s conference presentation at Hadath al Khatt.
Awards
Each year we are fortunate to win multiple international awards. And while it’s not about the awards themselves, these encouraging recognitions are just another thumbs-up to our incredible team to show that we’re on the right track and doing something worthwhile.
Our 22 wins this year are another nod in honor of the years and energy spent on these projects. Aeroplan won Gold at Hiiibrand 2023; was shortlisted at D&AD; awarded the ISTD Certificate of Excellence; awarded at CommArts, and was the Finalist at Ed-Awards 2023. Aneto received the ISTD Certificate of Excellence; Bronze at Hiiibrand 2023; and ANUARIA DE ORO 2024 as the best font family of the year. Playpen Sans was awarded the ISTD Certificate of Excellence; Gold at Ed-Awards; selected in Clap 2024 as best typeface design for titles; and Clap 2024 as best font design for text. Rezak was awarded the ISTD Certificate of Excellence, and Finalist at Hiiibrand 2023. Playwrite was awarded Clap Platinum 2024 as best font design for text. Postea was selected in Clap 2024 as best typeface design for titles. The Primarium.info project received Gold at Ed-Awards; the ISTD Certificate of Excellence in the Motion & Digital category; Gold at Indigo Awards in Digital Design for Social Change; and Silver for Web design at Indigo Awards. And Cecilia’s motion graphics were awarded by TDC for Aeroplan’s motion video, and won Clap Selection 2024 for best short film based on animated graphics.
Collectibles
We don’t just appreciate digital things, we love the analogue world as well. This year we expanded our shop with two new posters: Adelle Sans Korean and Ploquine. All our posters are free to you, just pay for shipping and you’ll have it right away.
Every five years we collate the typeface released within that time into a printed booklet to show off their details. This year was that year again, so grab your copy of our general catalogue highlighting 2019–2024.
This year we also updated our “Made to fit” catalogue, which shows best practices for involving type foundries in rebranding and design needs, answering common questions about type and its usage, busting font myths, and the options available for font licences.
Videos
Don’t miss the videos Cecilia Brarda created all year long for our new releases: Postea, Chaco, Ploquine, Tablet Gothic, and many others.
Conference sponsorships
As a company designing typefaces mostly for editorial work, we have been long-time supporters of magazines, newspapers, books, and myriad forms of digital information. With some of our team in attendance, this year we were happy to sponsor the Hadath al Khatt conference in Cairo, Egypt; Type Paris Now24, France; GRANSHAN Common Characters, UK; ISType, Turkey; the Alphabettes Soup Book; KulturTragWerk, Germany; TypeMeet HKDI, Hong Kong; and more events like these.
Team
Elena Veguillas is now a full-fledged doctor! Just a few days ago, Dr. Veguillas received word that she completed her doctoral programme, and we are absolutely thrilled for her and her perseverance. Join us in congratulating her!
This year client liaison Stuart Brown hopped on the team, but he has since moved on to another great opportunity in publishing. Tania Scaglione joined the team to get some experience as a graphic design intern. And here’s the biggest news of the year: we have enjoyed Poltik designer Patrycja Walczak so much that we will be bringing her on the team as a junior designer next year. Welcome Patrycja!
Gerard Unger Scholarship
We just passed the tenth year of our Gerard Unger Scholarship, an immersive and supportive mentorship programme for promising young type designers. Almost every winner has been awarded in some way for their completed design, and we hope to keep that record going far into the future.
This year’s winner was Dargon by Anne-Dauphine Borione, a highly stylised family for fantasy and adventure, with text styles and a unique uncial display style. This one will be a beast — literally — to complete, so we’ll light the tower fires when it’s time to storm the castle.
Our merit winners from 2024 deserve another shout-out, don’t they? The six promising typeface projects that received TypeTogether’s merit award were (alphabetically): Citadel by Guocheng Xin, Dilinh by Đông-Trúc Nguyễn, Dulungan by Jad Maza, Lezarde by Lucas Voilquin, Malinali by Sandra Morales, and Tarisel by Martin Brendecke.
Speaking of past scholarship winners, 2023 winner Patrycja Walczak’s Poltik began as a display-only family and is currently under massive expansion to include a reverse contrast text family — and it’s looking great! Trust us on this one.
Upcoming celebration
As we celebrate the Gerard Unger Scholarship’s tenth year, be watching closely because we will have big news and even bigger plans, led by Linda and Josh. This scholarship has always been one of our primary pillars and is the most distilled form of who we are. We want to shine a supportive spotlight on the great work that has been done, the values Gerard Unger passed on, and look to the future of type design with hope as we build something of excellence and insight all together. And we expect the scholarship’s next decade to be even better!
Meetings and travels
Our annual meeting this year was filled with old friends and new partners, great food and lots of laughter, Spanish countryside walks and surprising winds through breezeways, and lots of learning and many hours of hard work. Our team always has fun together and we can’t wait to meet up again next year.
Blogs & press
Linda Kudrnoská’s massive, multi-year undertaking to release Identity: The Story of Czech Graphic Design has been a hit! The total project introduces the world to the anthology of Czech graphic design through posters and book covers, wayfinding and public spaces, money and politics, and even propaganda. It incorporates a TV series (Czech only), multi-location exhibitions, a major documentary film (English), and an epic tome in Czech which was translated into English by Doug Arellanes. The film will be available on streaming services soon, and the books are available at their respective links above. Maiola, Bree Peru, Adelle, and Karmina are included in the exhibition (currently at Prague’s Kampa Museum until 2 February 2025), and an interview with Veronika is included in the TV series and the book.
On top of that, there have been local news stories, interviews, guided exhibition tours by Linda herself, design masterclasses, and other presentations to promote this cultural watershed in the Bohemian land. And with all the ripples this full-throated and multifaceted project is sending out through the cultural and design world, the project’s influence is sure to be felt for decades to come.
Workshops & talks
José had another busy year. In April 2024, José opened the master’s programme in analogue and digital editorial design at Argentina’s Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL). He is the co-director of the programme and teaches the advanced typography class. He gave a workshop on Latin type design at Founder Type’s headquarters in Beijing, China, and a presentation on Primarium at the 11th Founder Type Competition conference. José also spoke on culturally aware handwriting education at TypeCon in Portland, and gave a lecture and introductory workshop for MATD students at the University of Reading.
Veronika didn’t slow down either. She gave a talk entitled Type Matters at universities in Argentina and Brazil, another on Empowering the Future in Armenia, ran a type design workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia, and presented Primarium at Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI). José and Veronika together presented a logo design workshop at Interbrand Madrid and a Type design workshop at Waka, Madrid.
José and Veronika together presented a logo design workshop at Interbrand Madrid and a Type design workshop at Waka, Madrid.
Pooja continued her sporadic and in-depth “Typographic eye” emails, more type walks through her city, and a few conference presentations throughout the year. She also has a not-well-enough-known passion project of a handful of zines, each focusing on specific typographic themes.
Type critiques and awards
José judged the 11th Founder Type Competition, and Veronika was a jury member for TDC Tokyo, for TDC Ascenders, and for the Brand Impacts Award. She also continues to serve as co-chairwoman of the 13th GRANSHAN Type Design Competition.
Since receiving her doctorate, Cecilia increased her presentations as well. She gave a talk on audiovisual typographic narration at Universidad Nacional del Litoral. She also gave two presentations in different Argentinian universities, one on the creative process for type in motion at Diseña 2024, and the other at Universidad Nacional de Río Negro on keys to projecting motion graphics.
Azza took the main stage for her talk at Hadath al Khatt conference in Cairo, Egypt.
This year was one of the most productive years TypeTogether has had, and we have more great projects slated for 2025 and beyond. More typefaces? Of course; Poltik is on the calendar, along with some others. More custom projects? Always.
How about a new book? Or two? Sure! In fact, we’ve been working on them for the past few months. Our book summarising our groundbreaking Primarium research is already in the designer’s hands, and so is our book celebrating Gerard Unger and the scholarship in his name. Both will be released in 2025, and we hope you’ll be able to appreciate their stories as much as we have while writing them.
We are already working hard to make sure next year tops this one. Together, our goal is to make your design choices easier and your designs higher quality with greater aesthetic value. We want to create positive impact through the written word. Thanks for being part of our extended family and allowing us the benefit of working hard with you.
All our best,
The TypeTogether team
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.
