Turkish Graphic Designer and Type Designer Fatih Hardal founded Hardal Studio in 2019. With a background in graphic design, it was after his studies at Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts in Istanbul that he developed his passion and love for typography. Hardal Studio produces minimal and simple design solutions for screen display whilst also conducting studies of brand identity as well as typography. For the last two years, Hardal has been involved in a variety of typographic projects such as FH Giselle, FH Fraktur typeface and his 30 typographic poster project.
Created in September 2019, Hardal’s most recent font, FH Giselle, is a typeface produced for designers to use across a range of platforms including music, film, logo, publishing, corporate identity, games, theatre and screen design. It is composed of a single weight and provides typography support for lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers and punctuation. “I was inspired by Armin Hofmann’s Giselle poster, the name Giselle comes from there” explains Hardal.
Hardal’s most conceptual font, FH Fraktur, is a gothic-inspired typeface. Although FH Fraktur is not the most legible of types, it is certainly beautiful and fun. Inspired by Fraktur, Gothic characters and architectural structures, the design details are reflected in its geometric and heavy structure. FH Fraktur is part of the gothic serif typeface family and is composed of two varying weights. He describes it as “gothic and dirty in appearance… a calligraphic typeface”. Although he admits it is not the easiest to read, Hardal believes that sometimes form has priority over function.
A final project a series of 30 typographic posters where he experimented with creating custom typefaces. Hardal’s ultimate aim was to design a type that can be used across Turkey’s signposts nationwide, which will most likely take shape in the form of a sans serif font.
Having worked with many established clients throughout his career including Adidas, Airbnb, Adobe, Sony Music and Sagmeister & Walsh, Hardal is currently continuing his graduate studies at MUFFA whilst also practising freelance work. We look forward to many great projects to come.
