Founded in 2008, Fontfabric is an independent type foundry in Bulgaria. Established by Svetoslav Simov, the Fontfabric studio develops high quality type designs with an emphasis on versatility, particularly through their OpenType features and language support.
Collaboration is a part of Fontfabric’s mission and the foundry works with typographers to craft and release new type designs for a global design market. Two such typographers are Plamen Motev and Ivan Petrov.
Plamen feels that the design process of any great font should remain focused on both its purpose and its usability. The process should solve any design problems along the way while also achieving good overall aesthetics. Plamen has a natural affinity for type design, one that’s rooted in his former studies of math and geometry.
Ivan is a graphic designer with a strong background in typography and branding, as well. Working together with Plamen under Svet’s direction, one of Fontfabric’s more recent releases was born.
Gilam is a modern geometric sans serif with slightly condensed proportions. Designed for fantastic legibility, Gilam is just a straight-up great looking type design. Its inspiration can be found in DIN, a standard midcentury sans serif style that was used in administrative, technical, and traffic applications because of its uncomplicated design.
Where DIN is basic and rather simple in its architecture, Gilam brings a much more contemporary and updated feel through its outward-angled terminals, high x-height, and pointed edges. Still, it retains the same level of readability, conveying messages with clarity and authority. Gilam is a bit warmer in its demeanor, as well, making it a great choice for a wide variety of project types. In fact, its name actually translates to “joy of people,” meaning that it will share its message with your audience in an affable manner.
Gilam is available in Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Book, SemiBold, Bold, Black, and Heavy, with corresponding italics for each weight. This range of styles makes Gilam well suited for everything from headlines and editorials to advertising, publishing, logos, website designs, mobile applications, product packaging, letterhead, corporate communications, infographics, presentations, and white papers. It also works beautifully in identity and branding projects where design cohesion is needed across multiple media types.
Like most of Fontfabric’s other releases, Gilam offers a host of OpenType features that include contextual alternates, case sensitive forms, numerators, denominators, fractions, ordinals, standard ligatures, discretionary ligatures, oldstyle figures, tabular figures, and stylistic alternates.
Gilam’s multilingual support is extensive, as well, covering Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, Dutch, Afrikaans, Basic Greek, and Basic Cyrillic for thorough global accessibility.
Fontfabric currently offers more than 40 products through YouWorkForThem, including a range of serifs, sans serifs, scripts, and display fonts to suit a variety of project types. Visit their portfolio to check out the rest of their work and check back often for new releases.
