Established in 2015 by designer and typographer Sean Coady, Vintage Type Co. celebrates history through its exploration of typography and design.
As creative director of Vintage Type Co., Sean understands the importance of typography, citing it as the very foundation society was built upon. He makes a solid point with this observation; after all, without type… there wouldn’t be any words on this page.
The self-taught musician has learned a thing or two about design on his own, although the bulk of his design education was found in school. He finds that those who teach themselves design informally tend to have unique styles overall, although the fundamentals and history of design are equally important aspects that are often overlooked by self-taught designers who focus on learning software.
Sean takes an eclectic interest in design, favoring vintage elements that revive the spirit of days long since past. While he was in school, the course he took on design history proved to be one of the most important to his future career. He would later work as a graphic designer before launching Vintage Type Co. on his own, working with a number of international brands over the course of his career.
Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sean’s independent type studio puts a focus on crafting letterforms that “reveal the history of the more interesting type styles of the past,” providing high-quality fonts that are used by graphic designers around the world.
One of Vintage Type Co.’s most recent releases is Fellbaum Grotesk, a condensed grotesque sans serif that carries subtle humanist and cursive elements. Fellbaum Grotesk features a clean architecture that suits contemporary design aesthetics, yet its stroke contrast and slight-extended x-height create a distinctive artisanal appearance with a soft vintage edge.
Fellbaum Grotesk was inspired by sans serifs found on vintage apothecary labels and municipal street signage, standing with a condensed posture that makes the most of limited horizontal space. This type design works beautifully in applications where legibility in small point is key, including business cards, labels, tags, and fine print, yet it works equally well in large outputs that need a strong contemporary sans serif at the helm.
Fellbaum Grotesk is available in Regular and Italic, performing well as a focal point or a secondary accent in logos, displays, signage, headings, editorials, advertising, publishing, product packaging, merchandise, website designs, and mobile applications.
Providing additional flexibility through OpenType, Fellbaum Grotesk offers case-sensitive forms, fractions, standard ligatures, ordinals, small caps, lining figures, slashed zero, and stylistic alternates. Fellbaum Grotesk extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, and Pan African Latin for designs intended for an international audience.
Vintage Type Co. currently offers 21 products through YouWorkForThem. As the foundry’s name suggests, their body of work is comprised of a variety of beautiful vintage-style typography that includes serifs, sans serifs, scripts, and display fonts. If you love crafting retro-inspired designs, take a look at their portfolio and bookmark it so you can check back for new additions!
