W Type Foundry initially got its start under the name “Without Foundry” back in 2012. Based in Santiago, Chile, W Type Foundry is run by Diego Aravena, Patricio Truenos and Magdalena (Bana) Arasanz. The trio shares a deep love for typography, one that is extended through their collaborations with other graphic designers and typographers. They also share their knowledge of the field whenever possible through courses, workshops, and even podcast interviews.
Over the years, W Type Foundry has designed and released type designs that vary in theme and style, releasing geometric type designs, display fonts, gothic letter sets, and everything in between. “Our main goal is to create quality fonts through a strict design process incorporating global trends,” they said. With that in mind, the entire team draws from its varied background to tackle each new project they take on together. Their work has been selected for the Latin American Typography Biennale in 2014 and 2016, and we know they’re only heading toward great things in the future.
One of their more recent releases through YouWorkForThem is Hartwell, a neo-humanist sans serif type family of fonts with a geometric flair. Designed by David Súid, Hartwell balances strokes and terminals that are influenced by the calligraphic shapes from humanist typefaces with geometric touches for good measure, resulting in a contemporary sans serif that’s warm and welcoming. While some modern sans serif type designs border on a cold or neutral posture, Hartwell carries its heart on its sleeve, featuring characters that are pleasant and friendly while conveying every message with clarity.
Hartwell’s weights range from Thin to Heavy, giving graphic designers a lot of flexibility in their work. Hartwell is beautifully suited to everything from bold signage and displays to headlines, editorials, body copy, publishing, advertising, website designs, mobile applications, logos, letterhead, corporate communications, white papers, infographics, presentations, product packaging and informative product inserts, posters, labels, and marketing materials. Its range of weights and italics also make it perfect for branding and identity projects that require design cohesion across various media types and sizes.
Hartwell offers numerous OpenType features that include numerators, denominators, fractions, discretionary ligatures, standard ligatures, subscript, superscript, tabular figures, and stylistic alternates for additional versatility. Hartwell 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 23 products through YouWorkForThem, a varied range of sans serifs, serifs, brush scripts, and even the occasional layered type family for design projects of all kinds. Visit their portfolio to check out the rest of their work and if you love what you see there, bookmark it so you won’t miss out on any of their future releases!
