Fontwerk’s cross-continental workflow created a 1,000-weight typeface

The magic began with a lowercase ‘a.’ In 2022, while designing his typeface Tresor, Christoph Koeberlin sketched what would become the seed for the Tausend font collection – a letter that took a straightforward design direction rooted in German grotesque tradition yet retained an anarchistic core through its slight overhang, gentle top-heaviness, minimal contrast, and the subtle smile in its curves. This promising sketch caught the attention of Gabriel Richter, a type designer based in Japan, who had met Koeberlin while working as an intern at FontShop International in Berlin. The two designers, connected by their shared understanding of rule-breaking within structured design, embarked on a collaboration that would span continents and time zones. “You can only judge a design course if you follow it consistently,” Richter explains, describing his role as the driving force behind exploring different directions from that initial ‘a.’ The cross-continental workflow proved remarkably efficient. “I gave Christoph the latest files every day shortly before work and he did the same 12 hours later. So we halved the development time without getting stressed,” Richter reveals. This 12-hour cycle between Berlin and Fukuoka became the rhythm that shaped Tausend’s development. What emerged from this process challenges the static nature of traditional grotesques. The lowercase ‘a’ may have been the starting point, but the ‘e’ and ‘g’ joined it in defining the typeface’s DNA, while the distinctive ‘W’ as a double-V became a signature element. Koeberlin notes how they made it standard in the typeface’s Plakat styles while keeping it ‘activatable’ via OpenType features in other cuts.