What was first established as Without Foundry in 2012, eventually became known as W Type Foundry. Operated by Diego Aravena, Patricio Truenos, and Bana Arasanz, the foundry is dedicated to crafting innovative type designs that give graphic designers a lot of flexibility in their work through the use of extensive OpenType functionality and multilingual support.
Based in Santiago, Chile, the three type designers share a wealth of field knowledge between them, lending a high degree of professionalism to the fonts they release. That might be why, in 2014 and again in 2016, their work was selected to appear in the Latin American Typography Biennale.
The men behind W Type Foundry enjoy their work, but they’re also all about sharing the knowledge they have in their industry with those who have taken an interest in typography. Diego teaches at the Lettering and Typography Degree program at the University of Chile, and Patricio also educates his own students in the art of graphic design and calligraphy.
One of W Type Foundry’s more recent releases through YouWorkForThem is Lupulus, a bold display typeface that was inspired by the work of Rudolf Koch, a German expressionist and type designer. Koch was considered to be a master of calligraphy and illustration, two skills that lent themselves to his work in typography. Two of his most well-known type designs, Kabel and Neuland, served as the primary inspirations for Lupulus. Koch’s influence is evident throughout this type design’s architecture, which carries itself with a gothic yet contemporary posture.
Lupulus is an expressive type design, one that marches to the beat of its own drummer yet knows every step by heart. This type design is dramatic and full of energy, and it’s best suited to short blocks of text, headlines, subheadings, titling, logos, posters, and book cover designs. Lupulus is also a great choice for branding and identity projects because if there’s one thing to be said about it, it’s a truly memorable type design.
Lupulus is comprised of eight weights that include UltraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, UltraBold, Black, and Heavy, with corresponding italics for each weight. It also offers one ornamental series of characters that provides designers with 55 miscellaneous dingbats, icons, and catchwords.
Lupulus is equipped with additional OpenType features for greater versatility, including fractions, standard ligatures, superscript, and stylistic alternates. It extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, and Dutch for design projects intended for a global audience.
W Type Foundry currently offers 20 products through YouWorkForThem, including a range of serifs, sans serifs, scripts and display fonts for a variety of project types. Visit their portfolio to view the rest of their work and if you love what you see, bookmark it and check back often for new additions!
