Established by Ivan Gladkikh in 2013, TypeType foundry was one of the very first font foundries to emerge in St. Petersburg, Russia. The foundry itself holds collaboration in high regard, working with graphic designers and engineers throughout the world to release type designs that balance contemporary aesthetics and adaptable functionality.
What began as a hobby he enjoyed during quiet evenings eventually grew into a full time career for Ivan. “Font design as a profession has always been very complex and mysterious in some sense,” he began, “so it has attracted me for the whole duration of the past 12 years.” His first typefaces were simple display fonts; over time, his work would continually progress as his skill set and experience flourished in tandem.
“I always try to pay attention to typography when I’m traveling to different countries, and I try to systematize this knowledge,” Ivan told us. His travels yield an unending stream of inspiration and ideas that ultimately influence his type designs. “Different cultures have absolutely different typographics,” he said, noting that he’s particularly attracted to Scandinavian styles of typography.
One of Ivan’s most recent typefaces is TT Hazelnuts, a stylish type design that was initially created for the baking industry, specifically brand identity and bread packaging. “We’ve expanded the idea and created a typeface for a more universal application, keeping a lot of soft and beautiful style twists,” Ivan remarked. The finished result is a palatable sans serif with subtle yet strong design embellishments.
For Ivan, the core of his profession is taking an interest in every stage of a font’s creation. “The sketching stage is very exciting because this is the time when you have to find a compromise with your ideas,” he told us. Settling on the font weights is another important part of the process, he said, “because this is when you have to define the widths.” The testing methodology is when it all comes together. “Testing stage is the most important one as your font begins to lead its own life,” Ivan expressed, adding, “you need to create a font which is as right and correct as possible.”
Clearly, he knows what he’s talking about. The geometric soul of TT Hazelnuts reveals a trace of the human hand through calligraphic elements, and this is particularly notable in its true italics. “For every new font we try to enhance the process of its creation,” Ivan observed, heavily focusing on the italics and quality testing with TT Hazelnuts. “We’ve emphasized the well elaborated italics,” he said, “and now one can say that in terms of visual perception italics are basically separate font faces, and they are sometimes even brighter and more beautiful than roman.” As for the quality testing, Ivan told us, “We’ve made it significantly more complex so that our fonts can be used both in large text arrays and in small ones equally effectively.”
TT Hazelnuts hits every mark, offering designers an incredible amount of versatility within a single font family. Nine weights with corresponding true italics for each provide exceptional functionality and legibility for a wide variety of design projects. TT Hazelnuts is equally appropriate for large scale advertising displays, product packaging, branding and identity, logo design, headlines, editorial use, website design, mobile apps, and even business cards.
489 glyphs extend multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Pan African Latin, and Basic Cyrillic for worldwide accessibility. TT Hazelnuts is also equipped with contextual alternates, case sensitive forms, fractions, oldstyle figures, tabular figures, scientific inferiors, superscript, numerators, and denominators.
TT Hazelnuts is on sale right now for a whopping 82% off of its regular price through February 24, 2017 so it’s a great time to get this one!
TypeType foundry currently offers 40 products through YouWorkForThem and if you’re loving TT Hazelnuts, you’ve got to check out the rest of their portfolio! They’re working on some exciting stuff in the coming year and Ivan gave us a taste of what’s to come, explaining, “We’ve set ourselves a goal to release several high-quality font families until the end of 2017, including a traditional text typeface and a workhorse in the shape of a modern grotesque!”
Additionally, TypeType is collaborating with calligraphers from different countries while continually experimenting with contemporary calligraphy and scripts. In fact, Ivan told us that their next script will be based upon a wonderful Berlin calligrapher’s original calligraphy.
“We’re also developing a font which will provide an answer to the following question,” Ivan teased, “What happens if you combine an engineering approach to design with trendy decorative directions?”
We don’t know but one thing’s for certain: we can’t wait to find out!
