About the author
We are a tight-knit group of accomplished, multidisciplinary designers who share a passion for high-quality typefaces, calligraphy and lettering.
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What do all of these have in common?
Besides great typography choices, these famous large-scale projects are the product of smart decision-making on conceptual and functional levels alike.
No matter how big, advertising and branding teams cleverly focus on what they do best while leaving the missing pieces to specialized professionals.
Ever so often, these include experienced font designers such as ourselves at Fontfabric Type Foundry.
You’re in good hands
No matter how careful the screening process, entrusting a key project comes down to shared values and confidence in the devotion of the outside team.
The global design scene has been banking on our work—both retail and custom—for 12 years. With a solid international network of multi-disciplinary type consultants, our core team specializes in personalized typography solutions.
Moreover, stepping into new partnerships has proven to inevitably challenge us—creatively, technically, and time-wise. And we’re here for it!
Explore a run-down of our work process, or contact us for a 1:1 session to discuss your current projects.
The basics of partnering with a type foundry
Naturally, it all starts with several exploration calls.
We’ve been joining forces with agencies and studios like Design Bridge, DDB, Identity Works, AgencyTK, Superunion, Arthur London, and CauzaBG to help launch impactful projects that win awards.
Hannah Redmond, Brand and Creative Manager, Scope
“The whole process of working with Fontfabric to customize our brand font, Hargreaves, was fantastic. They listened carefully and took our vision on board, using their expertise to shape the final outcome. The unique character of the typeface combined with accessibility features has given us a great asset to work with, which truly brings our brand personality to life.”
The scope of typography services we’re sought for includes:
- custom typography for branding and campaigns;
- language extensions and alterations;
- flexible font licensing and consultation;
- solutions for personalized technical needs.
Beyond the list of services
It’s often the challenges that remain unveiled, speaking volumes about the impact of valuable partnerships with a type foundry.
In reality, even the most neatly planned projects present us with unexpected design hurdles. And that’s when our SWAT (special workarounds and typography) team swoops in.
We’re here to lift the curtain, letting you in on several of our custom projects and explore all the unpopular benefits of partnering with a type foundry.
1. You’ve got someone on the inside.
We’re living and breathing typography. Having been around long enough, we stay on top of all industry trends and quickly tell long-lasting solutions from time-sensitive experiments.
Also, we take our multi-disciplinary profiles seriously. Maintaining a rich understanding of other fields than our own distinguishes us as great advisors to have around. Especially, when developing the future headliner for your studio or agency’s portfolio.
In fact, our specialization in local scripts ensured the successful launch of a widely popular Telenor campaign back in 2014 when the company first entered the Bulgarian market.
Svet Simov (CEO & Founder, Fontfabric) joins the chat to tell us more about the intricate localization of the display font “Together”:
2. Reach for even bolder goals!
Choosing the right font foundry to fit your key projects allows you to scale up and go in a bolder creative direction.
By sharing the workload and entrusting whole segments of their projects to a dedicated foundry, branding and advertising teams open breathing room to focus on:
- Tasks that didn’t make the cut initially;
- Additional details on a conceptual level;
- Bulletproofing all design decisions;
- Reaching for bigger influence.
And that’s a crucial trait, especially when it comes to large-scale projects like our recent client Polpharma. This global pharmaceutical leader needed to overcome barriers in more than 30 new languages. All this while the company was going through pivotal market growth.
The expansion of Panton’s language support for Polpharma was by far one of the most daring projects our team has undertaken.
Plamen Motev (Creative Director) and Nikolay Petroussenko (Type Designer) take us back:
3. Experience the true meaning of “all hands on deck.”
The right type foundry acts as an extension of agencies’ and studios’ internal teams.
Every significant project requires a multi-layered approach that increases the design efficiency and minimizes the risk of overhead expenses beforehand.
By partnering with a type foundry like Fontfabric, you’re not simply delegating work but also benefiting from independent professionals and all resources they’ve accumulated over the years.
From start to finish, we take care of every aspect related to the typography for each project we work on. That includes usability, implementation, linguistic accuracy, consistency, application, aesthetics, legibility, and much more.
Emma, Account Director, AgencyTK
“With the help of Fontfabric we were able to create a font that had a distinctive character, whilst working alongside existing brand guidelines and graphic style. Fontfabric gives you excellent service and a willingness to go above and beyond.”
A very recent project of ours for the globally recognized Silverstone Circuit included designing four distinctive fonts suitable for text and a couple of fonts for headlines.
Plamen Motev revelas more details:
4. Stop playing tactics. Focus on leading instead.
Rather than focusing on logistics and planning every move like you’re in a design war, outsourcing a type foundry allows you to focus on the overall strategy and what you do best.
A true partnership shouldn’t require constant micro-management but general navigation of all forces involved.
A professional type foundry is equipped to see beyond the typographic aspect and integrate design solutions according to the needs of each project.
A very recent project for the Bulgaria National Football Team proves the type foundry’s multi-disciplinary profile. Tasked with creating a custom typeface to highlight the national team’s excellence, we set out to design the font based on local heraldry, tradition, and history.
Our team was trusted with the whole design from start to finish, while the client focused on planning and preparing all announcements and the official campaign launch.
Plamen Motev recalls some of the challenges along the way:
5. Access the best out of the font technology world.
An experienced type foundry like Fontfabric has developed a proven system for creation, review, and thorough testing of all digital products that go live.
By partnering with us, you get access to a specialized font environment and an end product insured on conceptual, design, and technical levels. According to the project’s needs, we put our designs in real-life situations and challenge their abilities in popular software and custom platforms.
Identity Works
“I totally agree, it has been really fun to develop this font together with you. And we really appreciate how helpful you’ve been during the whole process. Very professional!
Back in 2019, we delivered a challenging project on a technical level with Identity Works for their client Semantix.
The task was to find a technical solution for creating diagraphs in 5 languages (English, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, and Norwegian). And specifically—how to make these pairs of letters behave in a particular stylistic way.
As the leading designer in this project, Plamen Motev invites us to look under the hood:
Additionally, being among the first influential players in the font industry has earned our foundry a well-deserved spot in a global professional network. It allows us to exchange information on promising new platforms, updates, and rising trailblazers.
6. Rely on a positive feedback loop.
A successful project launch is only the beginning of an active cycle bound to be revisited in the future.
As time passes, impactful branding and advertising projects grow beyond their initial milestones. So does the need for timely updates, optimizations, and further expansion with fresh new ideas.
As professional type designers, we’re no strangers to creating products that require a constant feedback loop. Being one of the essential mediums in digital and offline communication, all typography choices are reviewed, tested, and reworked to stay relevant.
Nurturing long-term partnerships is a mutual promise for continuous devotion and readiness to further work on the building blocks to recurring success.
And ultimately, to the dream projects, every studio and agency is aiming for.
