Based in Hamburg, Germany, Fontador is a small independent type foundry that offers type design with an emphasis on corporate design, branding, and identity. The foundry was established by Arne Freytag, a graphic designer and typographer who has been working as a freelancer for nearly 20 years.
Arne first took an interest in typography while studying graphic design at Alsterdamm School of Visual arts, later completing his studies in Paris. His understanding of the principles and execution of quality type design was solidified while pursuing his master’s degree, giving him a solid foundation to build a successful career upon.
Arne loves variety when it comes to type design, with his favorite type designs ebbing and flowing as new design trends strike his fancy, although he admits that there are a few timeless classics that he always likes. His body of work through Fontador is varied, offering graphic designers a lot of great stuff to work with.
One of his most recent releases though Fontador is Bionik, a softly squarish serif design with a contemporary edge. This type design is equally well suited to print and screen applications. “The super ellipse-based forms and high x-height allow large and open letterforms,” Fontador said, adding that they are “perfectly adapted to the pixel grid on screen.”
Bionik may have a squarish presentation at first glance, but its rounded corners add a softness that keeps this type design from coming across as harsh. This friendly serif type family offers fantastic legibility and a very sophisticated, modern architecture that will find itself quite at home in a variety of design applications.
Bionik is available in ExtraLight, Light, Regular, SemiBold, Bold, and ExtraBold, with corresponding true italics for each. Its range of weights makes it a great choice for bold displays and signage, headlines, subheadings, editorials, publishing, advertising, magazines, logos, product packaging, letterhead, corporate communications, marketing materials, website designs, mobile applications, labels, tags, business cards, and more. It’s beautifully suited to branding and identity projects that need a stand out serif to take center stage.
Bionik is loaded with OpenType features that include capitals to small caps, case-sensitive forms, fractions, subscript, superscript, scientific inferiors, discretionary ligatures, standard ligatures, lining figures, oldstyle figures, proportional figures, tabular figures, and small caps for extra versatility. It extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, Dutch, Afrikaans, Latin Ligatures, and Basic Greek for design projects intended for a worldwide audience.
Through October 11, 2019, Bionik is on sale for 70% off of its regular price.
Fontador currently offers 11 products through YouWorkForThem, including a range of serif, sans serif, and display typefaces to suit a variety of design projects. Visit Arne’s portfolio to check out the rest of his work and if you love what you find there, bookmark it so you can check back often for new releases in the future!