ACME FONTS

Started in 1996, by Christian Küsters, Acme Fonts is a London-based foundry, offering fonts by Küsters and 13 other designers: Anthony Burrill, Gérard Paris-Clavel & Johannes Bergerhausen, Jean-Lou Desire, Paul Farrington, Robert Green, Paul Kehra, Henrik Kubel, Christian Küsters, Simon Piehl, Alex Rich, Carsten Schwesig, Sandy Suffield, Dirk Wachowiak, Anne Wehebrink and Paul Wilson. Küsters believes that type, as a medium, 'can be pushed beyond its hitherto accepted role - can be consciously loaded with cultural signifiers which might then run in visual parallel with verbal content; a type as commentary'. The name of the foundry itself developed out of this preoccupation with the subtle mechanisms of language. Acme literally means highest point of perfection, and is in complete contrast to its universal use to signify the opposite through a thousand-and-one Acme Laundry vans and the like. Typical of Acme's 'project-based' approach design is AF Metropolis, an experimental 3D font, designed by Küsters and Paul Beavis. Others include AF Carplates by Sandy Suffield and Christian Küsters, and AF Generation by Dirk Wachowiak.

Alias

Alias was formed in 1996 to design and market the typefaces created by Gareth Hague and David James who had collaborated on sleeves for the likes of Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry and System 7. Alias features radical typefaces with a strong design element that makes them suitable as both headline and text faces. Gareth Hague describes their origin as "Combining traditional drawing values with the computer's mastery of geometric form."

Alias has produced logotype and typeface design for clients including Ghost, Monsoon and Sunday Times Magazine and has worked with design agencies and advertising agencies on typefaces for corporate clients and advertising campaigns. Graphic design includes arts relatedprojects and book design for clients including Phaidon, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tate Modern, Somerset House and Birkenstock.

Archive Type

Archive Type specializes in old typefaces found in old prints, books and samples. The fonts, with the imperfections from years of good service all perfectly preserved, bring a 19th century typography to the digital age.

Club Type

Club Type was founded in 1985 by Adrian Williams, who began his career in 1969 converting many established metal designs for the new filmsetting devices. During the 70s, his FONTS Company converted typefaces to digitised systems and is responsible for many of his own original designs which he drew and cut, working with each manufacturer to make fonts for their unique formats. This experience led to the production of custom made fonts, designs for Corporate Identity such as Jaguar, Renault, Foster's, National Westminster Bank, British Gas, Cross Pens, Marks & Spencer and Branding commissions including Marie Curie Cancer Care, Business in the Community, Volvo.

Since 1987, a partnership with handwriting expert Dr. Rosemary Sassoon has produced a whole range of font products for reading and handwriting education in schools. These were developed from the Sassoon Projects' research and published findings and cater for National Literacy Strategy Guidelines used in UK schools.

Darren Scott

Darren Scott graduated from Salford University in Manchester with a Design Practice Degree in 1996. Formerly the Senior Designer and Typographic Consultant at McCann-Erickson Manchester, Darren now runs his own consultancy, Truth Design. Designing fonts was something he developed as a student. He was asked to develop a typeface for FUSE 15 [Cities] in 1995 which led to Berlin[er] his first digital font. His love affair with visible language has developed from there.

Fathom

NICK COOKE / G-TYPE

After releasing the Penguin family and Dartangnon with other foundries, Nick Cooke decided he would rather issue all future releases through his own G-Type foundry, launched in November 1999 in order to develop innovative, original, but most importantly, usable typefaces.

Nick started as a lettering artist in London in 1982 crafting type by hand for book jackets, but doesn’t miss the pre-digital age and puts his success down to “obsession, perseverance, thought and effort”. He controls every aspect of the creative process with particular emphasis placed on consistent character shapes, accurate positioning and extensive kerning.

Most of the G-Type collection comprises families in a useful range of weights with true italics; Chevin, Houschka, Nubian and the Sans & Serif Precious families. Houschka has an Alternate version with hanging numerals and non-rounded A, W and w, “for those people irked at the W’s resemblance to part of The Average White Band logo!”

Legibility is of prime importance to Nick and he has designed most of his fonts to work equally well as both text and display types. This duality is qualified by Nick’s advice on spacing: “for smallish text I would suggest an overall track of 2 or 3, and for large display sizes I would use minus tracking dependent on size”.

The multi-purpose suitability of G-Type fonts is borne out by the variety of environments they’re used in, from national newspapers (Mail on Sunday) to supermarket signage (Tesco), album sleeves (Peter Gabriel) to Corporate Identity (Royal Mail), magazines (New Woman, Garden Answers) to branding (Scottish Power, Cadbury-Schweppes, SKF, Birmingham Selfridges).

HamburgerFonts

HamburgerFonts is a small type foundry producing original and contemporary fonts for Mac and PC.

The foundry name is a reference to an anglicised version of the word 'Hamburgefons', popularised by type specimen books in the 1970's, and used as a string of characters to determine the look and feel of a desired font.

HamburgerFonts is run by UK-based typographer and graphic designer Stuart Brown who has been designing digital typefaces and letterforms since the late nineties. Stuart develops fonts commercially, alongside digital lettering and custom typography through the HamburgerFonts foundry.

Heinemann

The Heinemann fonts were initially developed by the in-house design team at Heinemann educational publishing out of the necessity to find the perfect font for use in early primary reading books and literacy products.

Identikal Corporation

The Identikal Corporation was founded by identical twins Adam & Nick Hayes whilst studying Graphic Communication at University in the mid-nineties. Since then, it has become recognised for combining an eclectic mixture of sound and vision, capable of producing unique work for any creative problem,from Graphic Design to Moving Image, Multimedia to Sound and Type Design.

Identikal have worked with clients all over the world, from Getty Images in America and Guinness in Eire, to the Drop Club in Hong Kong, whilst managing to keep a very impressive portfolio of work due to their striking and innovative style. They have developed a reputation that attracts some of the world’s most desirable clients, such as Sony Computer Entertainment, Universal Music, Virgin, Ministry of Sound, EMAP publishing and many more.

Identikal are the team behind the cult success of the Identikal Foundry. They have created some of the hottest modern fonts of this new century, including worldwide collections of around 250 families. Publications including, Maxim, Timeout, Dazed and Confused, Create, Mixmag, DJ Magazine, Wired and many others have used Identikal typefaces throughout their pages. The fonts are also popular amongst various music acts such as, Truesteppers, Shea Seger, Blue, Beverley Knight, Incognito, Shakira, Elisabeth Troy, MC Luck & DJ Neat, to name but a few. Ad campaigns such as PS2 The Third Place, the launch of the Nintendo Gameboy Advance, and Virgin Money have also used fonts from the Identikal Foundry Collections.
This has given Identikal a name in typography which many believe to be the strength and character behind the team.

Image Daddy

A new foundry from London-Based Typographer/Designer Duncan Rogers. Duncan’s a sucker for type who probably spends far too much of his time experimenting with display fonts where the individually characters must not only look good as stand-alone image but also work inside a body of Text. Image Daddy: It’s gotta be different, It’s gotta be pretty, and you've gotta be able to read its.

The Northern Block

Ogentroost

Ogentroost is the typographic arm of Diederik Corvers' Klaar Ontwerpen Design Consultancy based in the Netherlands. Klaar can be translated as clear, open, clean, transparent and pure, all bywords for Corvers' brand of (typo)graphic communication which employs minimal means for maximum effect. A focus on quality, not quantity.

Ogentroost's first OpenType release was inspired by a visit to the Scandinavian land of forests and lakes. The Suomi type family, says Corvers, "is like bent wooden furniture, which they happen to have a lot of. The squared-off round shape captures the paradox I found in Finland, severe around the edges, but relaxed at heart".

Undt

Welcome to Ündt TypeFaeces. The foundry features the dark, humorous and sometimes difficult type designs by Marcus McCallion. This award-winning designer studied graphic design at Nene College, Northampton (1990-92) before embarking on his freelance career. He enjoys working for a number of clients - including his current employment with Jonathan Barnbrook (Inoui id, roppongi hills) and is art director for Loca Records (locarecords.com). Ündt has produced custom type for a variety of companies, including MTV, Nickelodeon and TWB.

Virus

Virus is the font foundry of Jonathan Barnbrook and Barnbrook Design, started in 1997. In between collaborations with Tony Kaye and Damien Hurst, Jonathan Barnbrook has produced an extraordinary range of typefaces. Run in collaboration with Marcus Lies Allion Virus seeks to produce both experimental, innovative and usable fonts. Elegant and beautifully presented, the collection brings many of these unusual, sometimes disturbing, typefaces together through a vehicle that challenges politically as well as from a design perspective.