From futuristic, experimental font families to gorgeously rendered and timeless designs, these creatives are bringing us the most exciting type design out there. So, here’s our recent top 20…
Budapest-based creator of fonts such as Ambiant and Zorn, Laura Csocsán, boasts a compelling and masterful portfolio. She appears uniquely successful in capturing imagination and atmosphere through her type design. Born from organic and chaotic pen strokes, Zorn is imbued with a tight, palpable tension, whilst Ambiant harkens back to traditions cultivated in the Bauhaus movement.
Based in Bochum, Germany, Cihan Tamti is a Graphic Designer specialising in typography. He is the creator of typefaces including the incredible Giga Medium and Le Virage. Our particular favourite, Giga Medium, is a super heavy display font which works best on a large scale. Balancing beautifully between abstract and hyper-modern, it is nuanced, impactful and intensely laden with character.
Designer of the fabulous Gallique, Emma Marichal is a French typographic designer currently studying and conducting research at ESAD in Amiens. Her type work is grown from a meticulous drawing practice and emerges digitally as deeply thoughtful and thoroughly considered. Taking its name from the rose: Rosa gallica, Gallique is in an elegant, refined font with sharp, thorny serifs and transfixing, intertwining ligatures. Delicate in its gentle curves and yet, aggressively tough, Gallique is a perfect display of sublime, hypnotic type.
Designer of architecturally inspired Structa, stunning sharp serif variable font, Sprat, and the gorgeous Talona (WIP) Ethan’s portfolio is versatile and fascinating. As a recent graduate, the French type designer has spread his wings pretty fast. Inspired by sculptor and typographer Eric Gill, who was making work involved with the arts and crafts movement, Sprat beautifully infuses historic influences with tangible energy. Working masterfully through space and kerning, Sprat’s deep slopes and long, sharp serifs work beautifully as a variable font.
Hugo Jourdan – @hugojourdan
Part of Typelab’s new ‘Space’ collection, Ornamentum puts Hugo Jourdan up there as one of our favourite current designers. Inspired by an organic and futuristic aesthetic marriage, Ornamentum was built on a strict grid, meaning the characters interact with each other beautifully. Available in three weights, light, regular and bold, Ornamentum is original and attention-demanding in uniquely characterful ways.
Janik Sandbothe – @janiksandbothe
Earning him a place in Leonhard Laucpichler’s New Aesthetic, Janik’s Euphoria and AURAE display his incredible versatility as a designer. Euphoria is lusciously flowing, organic and aqueous; striking an impeccable balance between comfortability and contrast, whilst AURAE is a distinguished, minimal sans serif with and unexpected twist and two contrasting styles: calm and storm.
Floraine Rousselot – @floraine.rousselot
Founder of Typelab.fr and creator of some of our absolute favourite fonts, French type-focused graphic designer, Floraine Rousselot, easily earns her place in our top 20. Gvng, Katana, Slyther, and 1991 showcase some of the most stunning design about there and are all available via Typelab. Setting her apart in particular are Floraine’s 3D specimens for Gvng and Katana. Gorgeously addictive and forward thinking, Floraine’s work is some of the most exciting out there.
Margot Lévêque – @margot.leveque
Based in Paris, Margot Lévêque brings us the elegant, opulent Romie and Kalice. Inspired by calligraphy and built from many layers of hand drawing, Romie connotes a sleek, refined, sixties fashion feel. Although refined and minimal, it is full of subtly executed, unexpected angles; such as on the serifs on the capitalised G, E and L, as well as some stunning ligature glyphs.
Lover of book design, Jules Durand, has a huge portfolio of varied and energetic type design and is extending his expertise beyond designing for Latin alphabets and exploring Cyrillic and Greek fonts. Drawing on a vast range of influence, from a decorative medieval aesthetics to Celtic designs all the way to art nouveau, Jules is undeniably inquisitive and hugely talented; his latest release, Yamas, is available on themtyp.es.
Marie Boulanger – @mariedansparis
Type designer and illustrator, Marie Boulanger, is the creator of Romane, Manuel, Aligre, Faubourg Display and Scoop. Our personal favourite, Scoop, is a font family designed with digital news outlets in mind and harkens back to old new paper press fonts, brining a touch of the old into the new. Marie’s work is stunning and displays a real mastery of her craft.
Using a conceptual approach to produce flawless typographic design, Ilya Naumoff is the creator of geometric sans, Factor A, which delves into Latin and Cyrillic with exciting vivacity. One of his most fascinating projects to date is variable font, Grtsk, consisting of 126 fonts combined into one variable font. Ilya’s work is hugely expansive and we can’t wait to see what he will produce in the future.
Emilie Vizcano – @emilievizcano
Inspired by stone engraving in Roman times, Emilie brings us Lapicide. With its name deriving from the French for ‘stone engraver,’ Lapicide is an imaginative digital rmieagination of ancient craft. Its serifs reference the physical markings left in engraved stone. As a font it is visually hypnotic and addictive, putting Emilie right up there as one of our favourite designers.
Charlotte Rohde – @charlotte__rohde
Designer of Kêroïne, Armand Grotesk, Serifbabe, Marguerite Grotesk, Hadogenes and Calyces, Charlotte Rohde is one of our absolute favs. Each of her type ventures is imbued with so much character; Serifbabe moves throughout her years with different phases, from melancholic teenager to her more nuanced, eccentric twenties, whilst Hadogenes is named after the largest kind of scorpion in the world; each letter penetrating the next. Her portfolio is rich, accomplished, and entirely original.
Specialising in Latin and Armenian script, Gor Jihanian broaches the topic of multilingual design. His multi-script type family, Byron, is an incredible feat which creates space for a stunning integration of multilingual typography in Latin, Armenian and Greek texts. Spindle, a stunning work in progress, is a study of ‘horizontal continuity in letterforms’ and is available in Latin and Armenian.
Bayonet Services – @bayonet.services
Next up in our top 20 is the work of multidisciplinary Copenhagen based Designer @mazzymilo. Amongst his beautiful fonts, his newest display font features sophisticated, thin stems and playful serifs. Check his work out here.
Charlotte Vard – @charlotte.vard
Mother of an impeccable array of work, Charlotte Vard, is the designer of Begonia typeface. A gorgeous tribute to the largest genera of flowering plants, from which it takes its name, Begonia is also based on the Cheltenham typeface from around 1900. Refined, sophisticated and with some beautifully satisfying kerning, Begonia is a beautiful tribute to past design and reflective of Charlotte’s outstanding portfolio.
Lucas Descroix is the designer of a vast number of typefaces and font families including Nostra, Fragen, Grandmaster, Odisea, Syne and Faidherbe. A text-display hybrid, Fragen is laced with thoughtful details to create a cohesive, functional, yet lively feel, whilst 20th century Antique Press inspired Grandmaster displays versatility and creativity; playing with abstraction through an extreme vertical structure and intense regularity of shape.
Leah is 100% one of our favourite current designers; her extensively explorative project, GlyphWorld, easily earning her a place in our top 20. A typeface consisting of nine fonts, ‘it’s set in a mythical alternate font-world made of nine landscapes: Forest, Meadow, Flower, Mountain, Airland, Animal Soul, Glacier, Desert, and Wasteland.’ We love this project and its questioning of how far type design can be used to push boundaries; sculpting new ways of thinking about our emotional connections with environments. Don’t forget to check out Carmelo, Gorpite and Gaag, too.
Phaedra Charles – @phaedra.xyz
Brooklyn-based Phaedra Charles is bringing left-handed fonts into the spotlight with her gorgeous Mollydooker and Sinistral Hand. Infatuated with calligraphy and its mysticism, Phaedra has beautifully worked this feeling into her left-handed scripts, calcifying functional, yet stunningly crafted design into all of its features. Phaedra is currently working on the creation of her new independent type foundry, Upper Case, alongside Flavia Zimbardi.
This list simply scratches the surface for all the amazing independent type designers out there. Keep your eye peeled for our next list as we continue our hunt for the best type talent there is.
