Type designer interviews

We’ve hand picked a few Creative Characters interviews with type designers whose work in the field of text fonts is particularly note worthy and worth exploring. Their work won’t always have been designed specifically for web and screen use, rather these interviews are presented as a source of information about the process of designing a text font. We’ve included a few fonts we think might be worth exploring as potential text fonts for the web, but please do your own testing.

Dieter Hofrichter | Hoftype

In just twelve months Dieter Hofrichter’s foundry Hoftype has published an astounding array of useful, elegant and original text typefaces. Hofrichter’s career as a professional type designer began in 1989 when he was hired by H. Berthold AG. In the company’s famous studio he worked with the late Günter Gerhard Lange, the most exacting taskmaster in post-war German typography.

Read the full interview with Dieter Hofrichter

Gerard Unger | TypeTogether| Bitstream | URW | Linotype

Type design has always been an exacting, highly skilled profession, but that was doubly true in the early days of digital fonts. These faces had to work in highly demanding, challenging environments: CRT monitors, low resolution printers, and in a rapidly evolving newspaper industry. Unger is one of those individuals who tackled the limitations of technology head on. His pioneering techniques established a body of work admired the world over, both for its pragmatic, steely clarity, and its warmth and openness.

Read the full interview with Gerard Unger

Natalia Vasilyeva | ParaType

Vasilyeva is one of the most prolific designers of pragmatic text fonts and accomplished calligraphic typefaces for ParaType, Russia’s principal typefoundry. Yet her type designs represent only a fraction of her interests. Part scientist, part artist, we discovered a designer with a technician’s head and a calligrapher’s hand, happy to show us around her lab.

Read the full interview with Natalia Vasilyeva

Panos Vassiliou | Parachute

As soon as Parachute’s sophisticated type families began appearing on MyFonts, they caught the attention of our quality-conscious users. As well as several intricate and monumental script and display faces, Vassiliou is responsible for the Centro Pro super family, as well as several other superb text font families.

Read the full interview with Panos Vassiliou

Jos Buivenga | exljbris

The way Dutchman Buivenga rose to prominence on the type scene is quite remarkable. For years, his online friends and fans could follow the development of his typefaces via his website, and download the results at no cost. When his one-man foundry exljbris began selling his first commercial typeface Museo through MyFonts in 2008, several weights were offered for free. The generosity paid off: Museo became a meteoric bestseller, and is now the poster boy of the webfonts era. But there’s far more to exljbris than Museo…

Read the full interview with Jos Buivenga