As the typographer behind the foundry label, Fenotype, Emil Bertell has been drawn toward creative outlets and visual art since childhood. As he grew older, he attended an arts-based high school, where he learned a great deal about multimedia design — an education that would shape the course of his entire life and career.
Studying graphic design in high school, he began to take note of just how much typography affects a design — for better or for worse. Although his coursework didn’t necessarily focus on type design specifically, Emil began to explore it on his own. He actually released his first type design at just 16 years old — during a time when most of his schoolmates were busy with typical teenage endeavors.
Emil’s later attended university in Helsinki to study his craft in a formal setting, eventually working in the graphic design industry as a freelancer. An incredibly accomplished illustrator, he completed a number of projects for festivals, posters, advertising campaigns, and magazines.
In 2011, Emil’s career shifted to focus primarily on type designs. He established his personal foundry, Fenotype, to explore his passion for typography without limits. “I’ve always felt that if I polish a font too much it loses some expressive qualities,” he explained.
Emil’s work is consistently evocative, covering a broad array of visual styles that range from vintage to contemporary — and everywhere in between. Favoring hand-crafted type designs that are influenced by his extensive background in illustration and hand lettering, many of his products feature ornate script lettering.
One of his most recent releases through YouWorkForThem is Grand Atlantic, a complete font family that offers both uppercase serif character sets and retro-inspired cursive script.
The Grand Atlantic family features a flared all-caps serif in two weights and two styles for exceptional versatility. Grand Atlantic Serif is available in regular and bold, offering designers greater flexibility in their projects.
Grand Atlantic Brush features an ornate connective cursive script that offers stellar legibility and a beautiful, handcrafted style. This character set works equally well on its own or in tandem with Grand Atlantic Serif.
While both character styles are offered in a solid version, each one is available in a Print version that carries a distressed, letterpress texture that adds an instant vintage flair to any design project.
The Grand Atlantic family is perfect for everything from displays and signage to advertisements, logo designs, product packaging, merchandise, apparel, marketing materials, book covers, album artwork, posters, website designs, social media imagery, stationery and greeting cards, invitations, event programs, and mobile applications. This type family is a great choice for branding and identity projects that need a strong type family with an artisanal nature.
In addition to its six character sets, Grand Atlantic also offers a set of 52 Swoosh ornaments in regular and rugged Print textures for greater versatility. This character set features a variety of “terminal swashes” designed to be attached to the last letter in a string to create a natural swirl beneath the word.
Grand Atlantic Brush offers additional flexibility through OpenType, including standard ligatures, contextual alternates, titling alternates, stylistic alternates, and swash. It extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Pan African Latin, and Afrikaans for design projects intended for a global audience.
Emil Bertell currently offers 120 products through YouWorkForThem, including a wide range of serif, sans serif, script, and display type families to suit projects of all kinds. Visit his portfolio to take a look at the rest of his products and bookmark it so you can check back for new releases in the future!
